Get the word out
Bedford began by being up front with his people about the unexpected problems with integrating the technology platforms of the two companies that Republic acquired.
“The long-term objective doesn’t change,” Bedford says. “The timeline and perhaps the path to get there changes. So you need to reorient your short-term thinking in order to work around, in this case, the technology obstacles. You have to communicate that consistently and strongly to your front-line employees so they understand why it is their jobs are harder to accomplish.”
Your goal is not to explain every last detail of the challenge you’re facing. That will only create more confusion.
“Getting people to understand detailed technology challenges, frankly, we just avoid it,” Bedford says. “We don’t go into the nuts and bolts of what’s the bitmapping process to move PNRs from platform A to platform B. We don’t feel we have to get into the esoteric computerese of why the technology migration is more challenging or more daunting. We simply have to tell them that it is, and, ‘Here’s what we’re doing to overcome it, and here’s the timeline.’”
Bedford’s goal was simply to explain that because of the technology integration issues, it was going to take a bit longer to finish that part of the deal with Frontier and Midwest. But that wasn’t going to be easy either.
“We have 11,000 employees but at over 74 different locations,” Bedford says. “Probably closer to 5,000 of our employees are flight crews that are on 1,600 flights a day flying all over the country. It’s not like you could just call a team meeting and gather everybody in the conference room.”
So Bedford put together a series of opportunities for employees to hear about what was being done to resolve the problem.
There were group meetings attended by 150 to 200 people each that were recorded for rebroadcast on the website.
“Some of those podcasts were interactive, and we actually did open phone lines so people from across the country could listen in to the presentation and ask questions and everyone could hear the answers,” Bedford says. “We stored the podcasts on the website so employees that couldn’t listen to it real time could listen to the exchange and understand what was going on.”
Bedford also made trips to the company’s new locations in Denver and Milwaukee and continued his weekly letter to employees. The goal was to provide a multitude of opportunities for employees to get information.
It’s important that you find various ways to communicate, because your people will respond to it in different ways.
“If you put 10 people in a room and they listen to the exact same presentation, chances are they are going to walk out with 10 different assessments of what they heard,” Bedford says. “People just hear and process information differently, even if it’s identical information. Our goal wasn’t that people should walk away with the exact same understanding. Our goal was to present everybody with a consistent and transparent update with how we were progressing with the goal of getting through this short-term technology challenge.”
The more methods you use to talk to your people, whether it’s town-hall meetings, newsletters or even social media, your goal is to make it a challenge for your people not to hear your message.
“I’m not suggesting that they get it on the first go-around or even the second or the third,” Bedford says. “But if you continue to have this open dialogue and if from the top all the way down to middle management, if they are speaking consistently, sooner or later, they are going to figure it out.
“Then they’re out in the field saying, ‘Look, I know what these guys are trying to do. You may not get it, but I get it. Just be patient. We’re moving in the right direction.’”
