Westjet Airlines

WestJet Airlines

        WestJet Airlines is a Canadian low-cost carrier that was founded in 1996 by an entrepreneur Clive Beddoe. With an idea to start up a low-fare airline company, Beddoe quickly found a team of like-minded partners and WestJet Airlines was born.  The role model for WestJet was Southwest Airlines and Morris Air, both operating in the United States.  The main goal of the newfound company was to offer “affordable air travel coupled with good service” (WestJet handout, pg 52).  Besides being a very successful low-fare carrier, WestJet has a unique corporate culture that has been built around caring for its passengers. Even though, the image of WestJet Airlines seems perfect for today’s economy, this company faces some issues that will be discussed throughout the paper.

        The main problem WestJet faces is how to maintain the corporate culture with rapid company growth.  The “fun” culture is what WestJet is very proud of and “believed that the culture was the key to their airline’s continued success and they could not afford to mismanage it” (WestJet handout pg 52).  In tough economy and market competition, WestJet top management needs to make very important decisions to compete with its competitors while keeping the unique corporate culture.  First, the company’s challenges need to be analyzed to decide what the best alternatives are for WestJet future.

        To begin with the analysis, very important characteristic of the WestJetters is they are so customer oriented and successfully maintain the team spirit.  But, in this case it seems to be a big challenge for the company to keep up with their unique culture with rapid growth.  When it comes to hiring new people, the company’s top management prefers hiring people who are new to the airline industry.  Moreover, to become a Westjetter, a potential employee must have to character traits: enthusiasm and sense of humor (WestJet handout, pg 57).  In other words, for WestJet the team spirit would be hard to maintain while expanding rapidly.  If for example, WestJet hires someone who already has some experience, which kind of employee is harder to shift to WestJet culture.  In addition to keeping up the team spirit, bottom-up management style is another example of how maintaining the corporate culture with rapid growth.  Beddoe states “we set some standards and expectations, but don’t interfere in how our people do their jobs” (WestJet handout pg 55).  If the company grows rapidly, the bottom up management of style would be hard to manage. If the company hires new employees who worked in different type of management style, for those employees it would a big challenge to get familiar with the bottom up management style.  We are all different when it comes to performing job tasks; some employees prefer to have freedom and easily get to the bottom up management style and on the other hand some employee still need daily instructions what needs to be done.  Hiring Steve Smith, who worked for Air Canada and Air Ontario, was a challenge for the company’s culture.  He was hired to take over Beddoe’s position as a CEO.  But, the strategy was not successful because Smith’s experience and ideas did not fit into WestJet culture.  Smith was promoting different management style, “he had a top-down management style and was accustomed to dealing with hostile unions” (WestJet handout pg 58). That is why WestJet prefers to hire people new to the industry; who are easier to train and accept their unique corporate culture.