After an 18 month pay freeze, employees at the airline will be rewarded with a sizeable record results bonus
Qantas will reward workers with a hefty bonus after posting one of its biggest ever yearly profits of $1.02b in the 2015/16 financial year.
“This result belongs to the Qantas Group’s amazing people,” said CEO Alan Joyce. “Not only have they helped deliver a record performance. They’ve also earned record satisfaction from our customers.”
The company will offer a Record Results Bonus for around 25,000 employees, including pilots, cabin crew, ground staff, and check-in staff. Fulltime staff will receive $3,000 and part-time staff receiving $2,500.
Personnel will be eligible for the bonus only if they are covered by an EBA that includes an 18-month pay freeze – which was outlined in the $2b Qantas Transformation program launched in February 2014.
While executive staff had been on a pay freeze from December 2013, the 2014 program also included non-executive employees.
A series of union negotiations were held since February 2014 over these new salary conditions. Employees under subsequent EBAs that included the 18-month pay freeze were eligible for this year’s bonus and an earlier one offered in July last year.
At the time the company was again deemed profitable. Qantas offered a one-off bonus to staff affected by the pay freeze equivalent to 5% of each employee’s salary.
“Combined with last year’s special cash payment, it means we have set aside a total of more than $160 million in benefits for non-executive employees in just over a year,” Joyce said.
Both of these bonuses would also apply to employees who take up the pay freeze in the future.
“Immediately when any of the other agreements are signed up to, the employees will get last year's and this year's bonus at the same time,” Joyce said.
“The important thing for us in the transformation is cost management… We have gotten it down dramatically, but those employees that have contributed to that will get this bonus on top of the bonus last year.”
To promote this quick turnaround and increased profitability, Qantas pushed forward in a series of initiatives which increased engagement to 79% across all areas of the group – an increase from 68% in 2012.
Policies used to boost engagement amongst Qantas staff included:
- Improved workplace health and safety metrics
- ThankQ – an employee peer recognition program
- Flex@Q – a flexible workplace program
- A new program to tackle unconscious bias
Qantas also boosted the number of senior roles held by women, increasing the figures from 32% in FY15 to 34% in FY16.
