| Table of Contents Being Cabin Crew | The Ugly Truth Part 2 Page 1 – When Employees Tell Lies Page 2 – A Hideous Bunch of Misfits Page 3 – Bart’s Performance Feedback Page 4 – Quite Why… Page 5 – Cabin Crew Managers Being Cabin Crew | The Ugly Truth Part 4 |
Bart’s Performance Feedback
I want to begin this chapter by explaining why I completed detailed performance feedback on Bart and why I wrote it from home instead of during the flight, which is how it would normally be done.
Over the years, the way onboard performance feedback has been completed has changed frequently. One thing that has never changed is that Pursers and Flight Managers have always been expected to occasionally write more detailed feedback on a crew member. By more detailed, I mean more than just ticking boxes which is how performance feedback was completed for many years. There was additional space on these forms for free text, but it was only mandatory to write something if an ‘outstanding’ or ‘needs improvement’ score had been given.
In 2017, the system changed and feedback started being completed on iPads. The Cabin Crew also began completing upward feedback on the onboard managers, which had never been done previously.
The role of the Flight Manager in recent years has become far busier. Until a few years ago, we were not written into any of the onboard services, so could use our initiative and experience to decide where we were needed most. Flight Managers generally spent the flight helping deliver the service in First Class. While many worked hard, some took advantage and did very little. It was not uncommon for some Flight Managers to spend long periods of time in the Flight Deck, or prior to the introduction of iPads, to spend hours doing paperwork.
The company had long been aware that not all Flight Managers worked to the same standard, but being a remote workforce, it wasn’t easy to resolve. After many years of trying to address this issue, albeit unsuccessfully, the Flight Manager was finally written into the service. This meant they had an active role in the service, so had to be present.
For those who already worked hard, it put us under even more pressure. My role was to supervise the running of the flight and to coach and develop the Cabin Crew and both Pursers. Throughout my time as a Flight Manager, I would try to work with as many of the cabin crew as possible, in all three cabins.
As I’ve already mentioned, even on a half-empty flight, I still did a mid-flight drinks service with Mia in Economy. I also worked with Ven on the other end of his cart during the afternoon tea service in Premium. While working with Ven, I noticed how Bart was serving his customers on the opposite aisle.
It was very rare for me to sit down on a flight other than when I was on a rest break, which I didn’t take that often. I didn’t have the patience to read and preferred to keep myself busy. Before the introduction of iPads, my paperwork would take about forty minutes, depending on what had to be documented. The company had been working hard to reduce the amount of paperwork so the Flight Manager could spend more time being an effective coach and inflight lead.
Many of the company’s inbound flights flew through the night. Writing detailed performance feedback while tired and jetlagged was not easy. I tried to write performance feedback as often as I could. My manager once told me that I wrote more feedback than most Flight Managers.
Some years ago, after a flight where I had to address an issue with a crew member that needed to be documented, I wrote the performance feedback once I was home. We had spoken about what took place but I didn’t have time to document our discussion.
Having written the feedback once home, I emailed her a copy and also copied in her manager, plus my own. For the thirty years I was in the company, it had always been a requirement that all written feedback be copied to both employees’ managers.
From then on, I occasionally wrote feedback from home if I felt it was deserved or necessary. I still completed the mandatory performance feedback during the flight, either on paper or later, on my company iPad. The feedback I wrote from home was additional feedback that I was not obliged or required to write. Sometimes a flight could be so busy that there simply wasn’t the time to write a detailed performance assessment.
The following screenshot shows all the performance feedback that I wrote from home. I was a Flight Manager for nineteen years.
The following screenshot comes from Bart’s grievance. His comments are in blue, mine are in green. I was asked to respond to his complaint as part of the initial investigation being carried out by Cabin Crew Manager Lana. Bear in mind that Bart was still in probation.
At this time, I was still unaware that Anna was Bart’s fiancée, so he knew about the email I’d sent to the crew in Economy because he had read it.
This is the closing paragraph of the performance feedback that I wrote on Bart. He added “bullying; discussed with other crew” plus the text in blue. The second paragraph in dark green is my response:
My response to Bart will make more sense once you read my full response to his grievance.
Katrina completed his performance feedback because, as the Purser in First Class, she was responsible for doing it. The feedback app is designed so that the Purser’s iPad displays the form for Bart’s feedback, and it can’t be accessed by anyone else. This detail is important because of something that was discussed extensively during my appeal meeting.
The only way I could have completed Bart’s feedback would have been to complete it on Katrina’s iPad, which never crossed my mind. I did not discuss his performance with her at any time.
According to Bart’s grievance, Katrina scored him ten out of ten for both sectors. As you’ll see in due course, Katrina was aware that I had spoken to Bart on the outbound flight about taking drink and meal orders prior to take-off instead of once airborne, and she was also aware that a customer on our inbound sector complained because Bart missed him out at breakfast.
Awarding a crew member ten out of ten means they completed all aspects of their role to the highest standard. The ‘Cabin Crew’ were not given any training on how to write appropriate feedback, which is pretty shocking considering they were now doing upward feedback on onboard managers, which was used, in part, to decide who would be made redundant.
So any crew member, including those new to the company who may never have flown previously, could now complete upward feedback on an experienced onboard manager. With the feedback being anonymous, they could write whatever they wanted and could give the onboard manager a low score for any number of reasons. I’ll talk more about this in a later chapter.
Thankfully, on my flight to/from Atlanta, Claire and Katrina were responsible for doing my upward feedback. Imagine if it had been Bart, Anna, or Ven.
The following extract comes from Tommy’s witness statement:
Katrina said nothing about this in her witness statement because it wasn’t true. Katrina and I, who are similar in age and have been flying for a similar length of time, spoke extensively on both sectors about the role of Purser. Lottie made a direct reference to this in her witness statement.
Having flown previously as a Flight Manager with another airline for many years, Katrina took a keen interest in her performance and development and was enthusiastic to learn. Tommy is lying when he says I was trying to get her to give feedback to other crew members on their performance.
Claire, who worked alongside Katrina and I, is Katrina’s best friend. She was very experienced and needed no coaching or developmental feedback. Lottie was also very experienced and carried out her role to a high standard. She confirmed in her witness statement that I encouraged her to apply for promotion to Purser.
I spoke personally to Bart several times during both sectors about the way he was delivering the service, which only leaves Bruce, who worked in the galley. I also spoke to him about how the food was being presented. They’re the only people Katrina was responsible for doing feedback on. Actually, she also does feedback on Ven, who was working in Premium, but there was nothing to discuss with regard to the standard of his work.
Something to remember is that Tommy was already friends with Anna, Bart’s fiancée, before our trip to Atlanta. Tommy’s witness statement was strange. Some of his responses regarding me were lies, yet most of what he said about Bart was negative and damaging. It appeared to me that despite being friends with Anna, he didn’t think much of Bart.
This also comes from his statement:
I’m not sure what Tommy means by this statement. Did he expect me to run the service myself in First Class instead of allowing Katrina to do it? The Purser’s role is to run the service and lead and direct their crew.
I directed her as much as I could, but this was no ordinary flight. Bart, who was serving customers sitting on the right side of the cabin, had no idea what he was doing. The galley, which was being run by Bruce, was absolutely chaos.
Despite Bart telling me that he had worked in First Class many times, I do not believe he had ever worked in that cabin before. He was totally unfamiliar with even the most basic aspects of the service, which was being run exactly as it should according to the Service and Procedures manual.
I asked the company to confirm whether he had worked in First before, which was easy to establish, but my request was ignored.
When someone works up as a Purser, they need to be guided, but it would never be appropriate for the Flight Manager to take over completely. I gave Katrina as much guidance and support as I could, and we spoke extensively about the role of Purser, which she confirms in her witness statement.
Regarding managing Premium, Ven worked hard and had everything in that cabin under control.
A micro-manager is someone who excessively controls and closely monitors the work of their team, focusing on minor details and showing a lack of trust in their employees’ abilities.
Tommy was the Purser at the back of the aircraft so the amount of time that he spent at the front was limited. Despite never having worked up in that rank before, recently having been turned down for promotion to that position, plus it being his first flight back after being on a ground placement for a year, the service in Economy was completed in record time. Additionally, despite not bothering to complete mandatory feedback on me or the crew in his team, he accuses me of being a micro-manager.
The customers in First Class who completed their Voice of the Customer questionnaire following our return flight to Heathrow marked the crew as ‘excellent.’ One comment, however, said, “The service was held together under difficult circumstances.” So the chaos in the cabin was even noticed by at least one passenger.
In the first and second meetings regarding Bart’s grievance, Cabin Crew Managers Lana and Hayley told me that I should have spoken with Katrina regarding his performance so that she could write appropriate feedback. I explained that I didn’t feel that was appropriate, given that she had been in the company for a similar amount of time as Bart and was also the same rank.
Bear in mind that one of Bart’s complaints was that I discussed his performance with Katrina, which I didn’t, yet the company were now telling me I should have.
Had I completed his performance feedback myself using her iPad, which is what the Head of Cabin Crew told me during my appeal meeting that I should have done, I believe that may have been a breach of data protection because Katrina could have seen what I had written. She would also have been responsible for the feedback because it would have been written on her iPad.
I genuinely doubt that someone who was relatively new to the company and who was working up in a supervisory role for the first time would want to be put in a position where she had to write constructive feedback on a colleague, who not only was the same rank but who also joined the company just a few months after her.
I’m not an expert in employment law, but I have learned there must be a legitimate reason for sharing an employee’s feedback with another employee. If Katrina had been a trained Purser, it would have been totally different, but she wasn’t, she only worked up in this position for this one flight.
During both sectors, I spoke to Bart about three serious failings in the way he delivered the service. When I wrote his feedback from home, I included additional performance-related issues that I noticed but had not been discussed.
The following comes from the outcome of the appeal investigation carried out by the Head of Cabin Crew.
I admit that I may not have handled the issue surrounding Bart’s performance as well as I could have, however, I did my best under very difficult circumstances. Had the company rostered the flight with the correct crew complement in the first place, there would have been three trained onboard managers on the aircraft instead of just one.
The inbound sector was an incredibly busy and stressful flight with many problems to deal with. I didn’t take a break because I didn’t feel comfortable leaving the cabin. Due to th flight being shorter, and the dinner service being so busy, the crew had fifty minutes in the bunks.
In hindsight, with my dad being so unwell, I should have called in sick for this trip, but I rarely went sick unless I really had to, especially with it being Christmas. During this entire investigation, I was not given one iota of credit for anything that I did.
The following extract comes from my appeal. When I say, “In her findings”, I’m referring to Hayley, the Cabin Crew Manager who handled the second part of the grievance, which was the disciplinary meeting.
Neither Hayley nor the Head of Cabin Crew ever confirmed whether procedures had changed and that it was no longer necessary to copy Cabin Crew Managers into performance feedback. That’s because procedures had not changed.
During my nineteen years as a Flight Manager, I wrote detailed performance feedback countless times. On the paper forms that were used prior to the introduction of iPads, the crew member’s manager’s name and the manager’s name of the person completing the assessment had to be completed. I always discussed the feedback with the crew member before landing, which was normal procedure.
In recent years, I wrote a few assessments from home when I felt they were necessary or warranted. Most of them were positive, except for one, which was more developmental. I’ll share details on that shortly. These assessments were written from home because I either didn’t have time during the flight or was too tired to write anything worthwhile.
On each occasion, a copy was emailed to the crew member’s manager and to my own manager. Therefore I could have been asked on twelve separate occasions not to write performance assessments from home, but never was.
The fact that I copied Bart’s review to his manager was not “an underhanded tactic to damage his reputation or promotion.” Nor was it “a deliberate attempt to cause trouble and jeopardise his position for future promotion.” His manager was copied in because that’s company policy.
Bart’s comments demonstrate that he does not understand the reasons why performance feedback is written, nor does he understand the role of a “Performance and Development Manager” (aka Cabin Crew Manager). For that matter, I’m not sure Performance and Development Managers Lana, Hayley, or the Head of Cabin Crew understand that either. After all, all three questioned why I found it necessary to send a copy of Bart’s feedback to his manager.
Despite asking in all three meetings and in written documentation whether company policy had changed, I was never given an answer.
The following extract comes from evidence submitted as part of my defence. The second screenshot comes from the company’s Standard Operating Procedures Manual for Onboard Managers. “Performance Management” is the performance feedback that’s written on Cabin Crew and Onboard Managers.
Being Cabin Crew | The Ugly Truth 