Srilankan in head-on collision with staff productivity

SriLankan Airlines has set its sights internally eyeing its employees to ascertain who needs to clean up their act and increase the company’s overall productivity.

The reason behind this is believed to be its recent tie-up with the Oneworld Alliance that aims at impacting on all of the airline’s area of business and supporting it through one of their most extensive communications programmes, a media release stated.

“We are positively considering making unproductive people productive without being burdened with unproductive people,” the airline’s Human Resources Head Pradeepa Kekulawala told the Business Times. Staff strength at the national airline consists of over 5000 from various nationalities from around the world.

However, employees at the airline speaking with the Business Times raised concerns of possibilities that the airline plans to cut staff in the future.

But Mr. Kekulawala pointed out that they were currently engaged in studying the people to ensure more would be involved in multi-tasking.

This would allow more jobs to be carried out by one person apart from the individual’s current designated work.

These measures would be brought about to increase productivity within the organization and ensure improved services for the airline’s customers, he said.

Such re- engineering of the workforce would enable the management to root out the unproductive employees, it is believed.

This is expected to enhance productivity since the national carrier’s move to join the new alliance of 13 airlines The airline recently recruited staff at a cost of approximately Rs.20.4 million to meet the government’s plans to open up the Mattala International Airport in Hambantota .