Employee Centricity in Repairing a Damaged Corporate Reputation
I stowed my tray table and fidgeted with the screen controls, trying to play “Home Alone”. We were ready for take-off but I was already on cloud nine. I was 13 and flying home for my winter break. I was thrilled because I was flying by myself for the first time — that too, internationally. I felt independent and all grown up.
5 hours, and an abruptly stopped movie later, our plane was still on the tarmac. The ground visibility had dropped to dangerous levels due to fog, forcing our flight to be delayed, and ultimately cancelled. We were finally deboarded and brought to the terminal. If the flight was chaotic, the terminal was hell. Hundreds of flights had been cancelled and thousands of passengers like me were stranded in the airport.
15 years later, I still cringe at the memories of those horrible 48 hours being stuck at the airport. A frequent flyer who has taken 100+ flights since then, I (and my family) have never flown that airline again — such was the dent on the airline’s reputation in my books.
Hence I was fascinated to learn how JetBlue successfully managed to turnaround its damaged reputation from the Valentine’s Day crisis of 2007 — when bad weather forced JetBlue to cancel 1,100 flights, affecting more than 130,000 customers. Joel Peterson, Chairman of JetBlue shared the strategy behind tackling this massive reputation crisis in my “Reputation Management” class at Stanford GSB.
What enticed me about the strategy is that it did not focus solely on the customers — building the reputation among employees was also top of mind. The crisis was equally stressful for employees who had to deal with irate customers without an IROP (irregular operations) policy in place at the time.
“It was equally crucial for us to think about the impact on employee perception”.
— Joel Peterson, Chairman of JetBlue
JetBlue’s decision to issue the Customer Bill of Rights that compensated passengers for such grievances was a very costly move but a great move to build employee trust. All of us can relate to how such a grand customer-centric gesture from our employer would make us take pride in being a part of the organization.
But the response was not limited to resource-heavy initiatives. I found it particularly insightful to realize that it is possible to rebuild trust and reputation without spending millions (which let’s be honest — most of us don’t have).
Amid the many woes, many JetBlue employees stepped up and showed compassionate leadership, e.g. pilots arranging for pizzas to be delivered on the plane to calm the passengers. Joel and other JetBlue execs gathered many such stories from different work groups and shared them internally. These tales not only boosted (much needed) employee morale but also employees were moved by the gesture of JetBlue celebrating its employees as heroes.
JetBlue came out of the crisis stronger and rebuilt customer reputation because it framed it as an opportunity for team-bonding and strengthening the company culture.
As an MBA student getting trained to take on managerial responsibilities and lead teams, I sometimes lose sight of employee perception amidst the “customer-centricity” and “product-market fit” mantras of Silicon Valley. Joel’s story served as an impactful reminder that organizations are about people. And employees are people too.
