Cathay Pacific

Cathay Pacific is an international airline, with its head office and main hub located at Hong Kong International Airport. It connects more than 900 destinations throughout world and employ more than 23,000 people in Hong Kong and 30,000 in worldwide. It offers Cargo and passenger services to over 167 destinations globally and through its subsidiary airline Dragonair. This ensures convenient connections are made to additional regional destinations around Asia. It employs over 2,700 pilots from 43 nations globally. Though in 1990s, it was examined that customer service was unfriendly and more robotic. Though they did make a major change in flight training department but still didn't do customer retention, thereby causing many losses and raising many questions. Therefore, it's important that we put ourselves in the shoes of training manager that are addressed in this case study. 

The most important questions that came up are firstly, how the need assessment is conducted. A need assessment is defined as the systematic exploration of the way things are and the way things should be. Though, for our purpose, this analysis of need can be done at three levels. First Level is Organizational analysis that includes identification of organizational goal. Second level is task analysis that identifies the discrepancies between the employee's skills and skills required to perform the job. Third level is identified at personal level.  This level is related with individual's ability to perform a job. It gives a clear understanding of where the problem exists and what is the best solution for that problem.

As per the textbook definition of organizational analysis, it is defined as a "process used to better understand the characteristics of an organization and to determine where the training is needed and under what conditions it will occur". Organizational analysis facilitates the trainer to identify training goals, for instance Cathay Pacific needs broad view about departments and concerned areas needing more improvement. This analysis also helps to identify resources and core competencies in terms of money, material and human expertise of Cathay Pacific. It clarifies the cultural situation and climate of airline by understanding relation between the senior and middle manager, and the trust among employees. This analysis also gives an idea of environmental constrains that can affect the successful training. Different methods can be used to collect organization climate data like Organizational climax index, skill inventory index, and efficiency index.  Firstly, Organization climax index helps to understand the quality of working life already existing in the airline and how the difference can be filled by training. This type of data can be collected by customer feedback, attitude surveys etc.  Secondly, Skill inventory index helps to analyze standard skills that are needed to serve the airline customers and also the skills that employees have.  Lastly, efficiency index helps to collect information of airline budget.

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