Case Study 1

United Airline lottery backlash

In 2018, United Airline (UA) announced a plan to replace its quarterly employee bonuses with a lottery scheme. Under the old plan, employees are qualified when they met a certain KPI set by the company. Under the new plan, employees would be in to win a drawing for a hundred thousand dollars cash prize each quarter as well as other prizes included paid holidays and other rewards. The intention of the executives was to “introduce a better, more exciting program”. However, employees including pilots and flight attendants fought back the program and complained to union arguing that these changes made it difficult to earn bonuses (Josephs, 2018; Caron, 2018).

Stock image by Samography on Pexels

This action sparks a major backlash that employees not only fought against this change but also took it onto social media where UA were heavily criticised for their elitism of favouring the few lucky ones. Many of UA’s employees signed the petition blaming the company for treating its employees unfairly. (Vesalo, 2018) Eventually the union steps in and negotiated with the executive to overturn this change.

While UA’s president claimed that the executives “misjudged” how employees would understand and interpret this idea, the change was clearly communicated poorly. UA did not seek feedbacks from stakeholder included staff members and union early on to adjust how to deliver the information based on anticipated stakeholder and public reaction. The public receive the information as “United tried to replace bonuses with a $100,000 lottery” (Isidore, 2018). Although it is not clear if UA’s intension was to tighten the budget or to improve the staff’s welfare, it is no longer relevant as the stakeholders are now under the wrong impression and the change was failed to be implemented due to poor change communication.

Go Back

Caron, C. (2018, March 5). United Airlines Pauses Lottery for Bonuses After Employees Rebel Online. (The New York Times) Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/05/business/united-airlines-employee-bonuses-lottery.html

Isidore, C. (2018, March 5). United tried to replace bonuses with a $100,000 lottery. (CNN Money) Retrieved from https://money.cnn.com/2018/03/05/news/companies/united-airlines-lottery/index.html

Josephs, L. (2018, March 5). United Airlines shelves lottery bonus program after employee backlash. (CNBC) Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/05/united-airlines-swaps-quarterly-bonuses-with-a-lottery-angering-some.html

Page updated

Report abuse