JetBlue's Blueprint for Success: Five Tips on how to Hire Staff with Skills and Character.

HOST: JENNIFER (00:01):

Welcome to episode number 38 of the Going for Greatness Show. I'm Jennifer Weissman. It's December. That means airline travel is a nightmare. That means waiting in line, angry customer service representatives, delayed flights, and lost bags. All of these flying nightmares often create a frustrating travel experience. I thought it would be interesting to talk to the founder of JetBlue's board. Anne Rhodes helped describe the origin of how JetBlue was built on values and shared details on how they ask questions to hire the right people for JetBlue. Here are some highlights of my conversation with Anne Road.

GUEST: ANN (00:47):

We will not tolerate people that don't have the values. It's just not part of our makeup, part of our persona. So the secret sauce is we ask questions on the values. We don't just check for competencies. We want a combination of competencies and values. We don't want just one or the other. Walk through an airport and watch the people who seem happy. <laugh>, you'll see Deb Blue employees just being happy. They smile. If you go to JFK and see them, our main airport, you'll see people being so happy and acting glad to be there. And then you look at other airports, go through, and see other airline employees.

HOST: JENNIFER (01:25):

Now, here's my entire conversation with Anne Rhodes. Please pay special attention to what she says about core values, accountability, and behavior as part of the DNA of JetBlue and how they remain a very profitable airline. If JetBlue were a character in a story, how would you describe its personality?

GUEST: ANN (01:47):

A very energetic, can-do attitude. What's interesting is everyone said that we would never make it. Many airlines had gone broke in the prior 12 to 18 months. And so when we got together and said that it doesn't matter what people think, we would do it. The character was an individual who did not believe in failure, which was interesting. They had a 3% unemployment rate, and we still thought we could hire the best  A players around. When people told us they weren't available, we found them. We had a delivery of 10 planes within three years. So we had to have over a thousand people. And it took us 28 people to interview to hire one. So you can imagine what kind of activity we had. So you had to be enthusiastic, you had to be energetic, you had to have this we and win attitude. And to me, that is everything about JetBlue. When we started smiling and happy and working 12-hour days, that's okay, right? The character wanted to win. So we were; it was a bunch of winners who believed and had experience winning and believed they could do it. Regardless of the circumstances, frankly, core

HOST: JENNIFER (03:01):

Values are around behavior. Is that what I'm hearing you say?  

GUEST: ANN (03:05):

We believe that values have to be described. You can put integrity on the wall, but it doesn't mean anything to anyone unless they know what behaviors make up that particular value. So, if fun is one of your values, you must start with people with a sense of humor, right? And that's what we did. We wanted fun because we knew it was a callous environment.  But we wanted people to enjoy coming to work. The minute they come in that door. If you were at their offices in Long Island, New York, you would see an attitude you wouldn't believe. They come in smiling. They leave smiling. They, that is, by design. We wanted a value to be fun. We wanted a value to be caring. What they did during COVID-19 was incredible for their people. Our people, I still call it our, even though I went off the board about a year and a half, a couple of years ago, it's just an attitude of winning, an attitude of caring, an attitude of fun, because their values, those are the values: caring, fun, integrity, safety, literally. I think it's also about passion for the customer, internal and external. And you have to remember your internal come first. 'cause if you don't have a passion for your people, you don't, you'll never have a passion for your customers.

HOST: JENNIFER (04:17):

Give me an example of how you have fun at JetBlue, especially during Corona when no one was flying. That could not have been fun.

GUEST: ANN (04:25):

That's exactly right. Um, but I will tell you it wasn't fun, and it was very, very difficult. But for instance, let me give you an example. The caring value was first paid, and board and management members did it. They paid for anyone's funeral. That was a close family member. It was done. That's a caring value. The fun part was that several people said, we wanna learn during COVID. So, instead of like every other company, they cut training, they cut getting together. What JetBlue did well was that we sent fun messages on your computer in the morning. For those at home, we gave their mothers extra time to stay with the children.  I heard that 25% of childcare centers in New York went under.

GUEST: ANN (05:15):

So there was no one to take care of your children, and your older parents couldn't do it either because of the potential for them to get infected. So we told 'em to enjoy your children, stay home, and we'll give you two years, and you won't use your sen, you won't lose your seniority. You will keep that seniority, which is critical in the airline world, and enjoy it. And if there's anything we can do, there were areas where, for example, people went out and helped these people that needed food. We paid for things to happen in the community. We paid our employees to go to the community and work. We let them enjoy what was going on as much as they could. And to make the best of it. I think, and we also, by the way, uh, started people going to college. We agreed with the university for them to go to school online—online and in-person. And 135 graduates finally graduated. The first graduate graduation of 135 people, all of whom told us they did not have a family member who had ever graduated from college.

HOST: JENNIFER (06:24):

Wow. That's amazing.

GUEST: ANN (06:26):

We have what's called the JCCF Fund. It's a jet crew member fund. And it employs the first day you start, you can give a dollar more to the fund. So, as a board member, I gave them cash that I received for that fund. And what happened during COVID was that some people couldn't pay their rent. They applied and, in most instances, were given money to pay their rent. They often had other issues, and they could apply their different reasons. We delineate the reasons; you can use them if any of those circumstances happen. And we gave out over a million dollars.

HOST: JENNIFER (07:04):

When you say you are loyal to the employees, I imagine you have a very low turnover in an industry that is probably very high, right? Is that right?

GUEST: ANN (07:13):

We started with a very low turnover. I frankly don't have the numbers since Covid. 'cause I know Covid caused many people to turnover that wouldn't usually. And for the most part, when we lose people, it's because of childcare or other things they can't control. If you go online and look at our website, and you look at some of the comments people make, you will see that they love working there. It's constant. I get it all the time on the website: seven to 10% turnover in our reservation agents. And most people are 25 to 30%.  Now, I will tell you one thing we found out when we were recruiting, and we first started in 1999; what happened was our employees, some potential employees, said, is there any way we were in Salt Lake City --  our first reservation center?

GUEST: ANN (08:01):

Is there any way we can work from home? And we figured out a way. We were the first ones ever to do it. And so these mothers, for the most part, the Mormon moms, got to stay home and work from home. And that, if you think about 24 years ago, that was not happening. But we said there'd probably be a way because they asked us. And David, the founder, said there's a way, and we'll have the technology. We'll create it and figure out a way—another part of the caring value to me.

HOST: JENNIFER (08:28):

Is JetBlue a profitable airline?

GUEST: ANN (08:30):

Yes, since we started the airline, we've been profitable. Our stock has suffered recently. They're going through a potential merger with Spirit Purchase spirit. Whenever that happens, you go through a period before culture is what people do when they're not looking. But it's also the collection of behaviors when you think about it. So the secret sauce is we ask questions on the values. We don't just check for competencies. We want a combination of competencies and values. We don't want just one or the other. If you look at most employers, they look for competencies versus values, and maybe sometimes they haven't even defined the behaviors they want. So, to get a consistent customer experience, we look for similar behaviors in the people we hire. And that's why it takes so many even to hire one. And it's tough in today's environment.

GUEST: ANN (09:21):

However, we ask specific questions about experience because experience is about 93% predictive of how you will behave in the future. So obviously, if you have integrity yesterday, you're gonna have integrity today, right?  And if you didn't have it, you wouldn't have it today. And so, integrity would be a question we ask. Give us an example of a time when, by telling the truth, you could be losing your job, but you still told the truth, right? One of caring is, give me an example of a challenging customer situation where you had to go above and beyond to take care of the customer. So, the key is specific examples where you tell us the situation, the action, and the result. We call it a star. Then, the comparator is you see that people behave in a way that mirrors those values and behaviors you've defined.

GUEST: ANN (10:13):

Many companies believe that just putting the words on the wall has people walk in with those values. That doesn't happen. You have to be very specific. Talk about them. You'll see example after example. They go across the screen. When you turn on your computer, their lanyards have values on them. Every manager has stories of people living the values, giving examples of the behaviors we're looking for. We will reiterate the values continuously. When you enter the headquarters, the wallpaper has the values all over it. And not only that, you know what's interesting? It's intuitive when you have the values, and they're so alive, and people are continuing to live those. And people will hold other people who work there accountable. When they see someone not living it, they will talk to 'em about it. That isn't the value that we practice here.

HOST: JENNIFER (10:58):

Thank you for listening to episode number 38 of the Going For Greatness Show. I'm Jennifer Weitzman, your host. If you found value in anything Ann shared about best hiring practices based on values, please share this episode with a friend or post it on your social media. Thank you for listening to the Going for Greatness Show.