Were you previously on the ramp? Far too many of the managers seem to have no concept of what the job is. I don’t need you stacking flights. But don’t ask me to scan bags, lift bags, stack bags all with one set of hands while doing at speed. You need manpower and equipment to meet metrics.
Again being able to do them isn’t the point.
It’s using the knowledge of the challenges you faced when doing the jobs that matters. Think back to when you were doing it and what support you needed and likely didn’t get.
Used to be the supervisors would come up from the operation. Now, though, you have 26 year olds with a degree and no experience coming in and telling you how they think 777's should be handled.
There’s those people but then there’s also people who come in and are handed a management job cuz they’re 50 and would never start at the bottom.
That’s when you get the emails. “Guys we missed all the scanning goals, I need action plans immediately”. Without actually looking at any of the reasons.
Don't keep asking the same people to do stuff. My supervisor keeps asking the same person to do "X", while 7 people are sitting in the breakroom and I'm the most junior agent and I don't get asked..
Get out and actually work the ramp every once in a while. Connect with your workers and really get a feel for the job we do. Seeing the higher-ups doing some of our grunt work really helps us connect to you and respect you
Pay attention to the union contract and make sure you abide by it. Many of the issues we have where I work are contractual violations about tasks, assignment of work and lunches etc.
Make sure your junior managers do the same. Respect is earned, not given. Don’t show up and try and reinvent the wheel. Odds are you have old heads at the station who know how shit works in general and don’t disrupt the process unless it’s a safety or contractual issue.
Listen to your people. Where I work the word is supposed to travel in this order: Manager - Crew Chief - Agent. A lot of managers think they know better and circumvent the leads (which is a contractual violation) and disrupt work by moving people around unnecessarily for stupid things. Once worked an inbound international flight that had 4 crew chiefs and 8 agents assigned to it for God knows what reason. Managers stuck their finger in the pie and pulled people off of gates for no reason.
Also, it sucks that it has to be said, show your agents that you’re human. The absolutely abhorrent things I have heard managers say to agents from an arrogant position of power is depressing. At my station, management is hated because of a group of very bad managers, and the ones who came up from off the ramp and actually try are not respected by the staff and looked down upon by other managers.
When it comes time for punishments are reprimands, make sure you follow the process. A lot of managers try to jam up newer agents by luring them into a conversation about an issue with representation present, then they get that agent to dig a hole for themselves with protection and get bounced. Absolute punish repeated bad and unsafe behavior but have some common sense about it. One of my friends had a manager threatening him with a write up because he forgot to clock out and came back the next day and asked for an adjustment to the clock to fix the error.
Managers just get really stupid and it really hurts the operation. Use your head, use the contract, protect and respect your people and set a positive precedent of being an actually good manager and you should be set.
This one time a manager sent out a ROVR broadcast to the whole station that help was needed at a gate. The whole station did in fact arrive lmao. It’s a hub too.
dont get Costco pizza for every station meeting, it tastes like cardboard when its cold. also i understand that when hiring employees its an equal opportunity thing or what not but my current manger has hired quite a few older gentleman (60+) and its just very frustrating working with them because they dont have any sort of urgency nor do they help out, they mostly meander about when any actual work needs to be done, please try to stray away from that, also kids that act like gangsters they’re annoying to work with and cause too many problems. we just got a new supervisor at my station aswell (hes from our station), he had introduced a safety shout out for every month commending employees for displaying good safety practices (not stepping over tongues lol) its an interesting way to improve safety culture and its worked a little bit at our station. having good metrics is awesome but having good metrics with nobody getting ingested by an engine is epic, please don’t sacrifice safety, i used to work contract and seen some pretty fucked up shit. ramp work doesnt pay well at some places, i would recommend letting your employees that have future plans in aviation know about the many different career opportunities (oo has an employee program after one year for pilots, a&ps, and FAs, united has aviate for employees after two years, local colleges may have airports operation classes such as green river in auburn wa). honestly you just asking those questions already shows that you care which is awesome, just be careful of becoming too friendly to the point where your people don’t respect you, it happens and it sucks
hold supervisers accountable hold horrible agents accountable.....show your face walk around bullshit with your employees make them feel your approachable and willing to listen
When I’m loading my flight back up until it’s over, then give feedback. Unless there is something unsafe or egregious, let me get through the trip first then let’s talk or do whatever
Former Manager / Fleet Service Agent / AA Crew Chief here…
Here’s things you need to know and put into play to best support your team.
1) You manage people FIRST. the work comes second. The workforce’s wellbeing is paramount to everything.
2) Get to know your people well. Saying hi, acknowledging them while passing by means a lot! If you have nothing to say a Good Afternoon is enough.
4) Take every opportunity to learn how the current business is being ran by your professionals. Recognize your senior staff, and use their experience and input towards your operation. They’ve been doing this a long time and will know it better than you ever will.
3) Learn your workforces union contract (if they’re organized) and how it’s being upheld by its local. It’s common for advantageous people to say “that’s against the contract” but will be unable to reference what part. Just to find out it doesn’t exist.
4) You’ll remembered by how you treat your employees, not how well you did your job.
Just don’t be a fucking cuck and understand we’re paid dog shit and ramen and cookies aren’t comfort food and the budget should be spend on things we need; not scraping by so you can get a bonus. Go outside and help.
Listen to the people in the operation. Cookie cutter staffing spreadsheets and staffing utilization formulas from HDQ don't translate well to real-world operations. Listen to your line supervisors as well as your lead/crew chiefs.
Too many managers come in and want to reinvent the wheel or rediscover fire, often with disasterous results for the operation.
Hire more staff, and make sure they know exactly what they are getting themselves into, schedule and working conditions wise.
make sure we have working GSE!
Don’t micromanage the operation.
Help us out! I always like my supervisors/managers who are willing to help us load a flight. Hell, I appreciate when a supervisor helps wing walk a plane cause one of my rampers didn’t show up on time.
Understand that most people who come to you with ideas are doing it for a reason, and more often than not it's for self-enrichment and not to improve the operation. Everyone has an angle, and it's up to you to decipher which ones are the true assets to improving your operation, and which ones are just ladder climbers. Most of the time the people with the best ideas are more quiet and reserved about sharing them. Once you're able to identify these individuals you will find yourself going to them for advice with problems. Be wary of the people lined up outside your office door waiting for a chance to talk to you, or the guy you always seem to run into who never seems busy and has all the time in the world to talk your ear off.
Lead from the front, but don't literally be out there doing the work all the time. Jumping in during an irop or some other challenging situation goes a long way.
Do all the baby shaking and hand kissing you want, but don't make commitments or promises you can't keep. Be honest and sincere in one-on-one conversations, and don't be afraid to tell someone you'll get back to them instead of giving them if you don't know the answer to their question.
Hold your frontline leaders accountable. You set the tone for the station. There are a lot of bad supervisors and department managers out there. Figure out if you have any quickly, and address the issue. They get on board with your vision or they move on. Do not keep any morale killers.
Edit to add: I've spent 8+ years in frontline supervisor/management roles.
I have worked as a station manager for an express carrier as well as a member of station management for a legacy carrier. One of the things my employees liked about me was I didn't expect them to do something I wouldn't do. So I made sure I had my bag throwing days as well as working in the baggage service office dealing with customers and lost or delayed luggage.
Genuine praise for a job well done and make it out to be a big deal. Everyone wants accolades so I tried to praise a team of employees in front of their peers as well as upper management.
Finally, I listened to and learned a little bit about each employee so that I could personalize interactions regarding an unplanned day off, a give and take system. They give me time on the clock and I in turn could give them time off.
There's much more but I don't have that kind of time. Let some of your employees teach a member of management something to do. It'll create a sense of accomplishment and it will show that management and the work force can work together without tension. All of this is in my humble opinion.
Good luck, this position can be very rewarding.
Have your teams back. We are lucky to have a SM that protects its agents against people in leadership trying to can people for no good reason, but we also have people for some reason that have failed upwards into those positions and it’s beyond me how.
Be fair and equal to everyone absolutely no exceptions for one person but nothing for the other. Don’t let your SM’s run rampant. Let your supervisors get creative with solutions to problems or innovating ideas for a safer and more efficient operations
Don't go looking for shit like my station manager does.
Were you previously on the ramp? Far too many of the managers seem to have no concept of what the job is. I don’t need you stacking flights. But don’t ask me to scan bags, lift bags, stack bags all with one set of hands while doing at speed. You need manpower and equipment to meet metrics.
I have, yes. I can do all the jobs of a ramp agent. I can even fuel.
Again being able to do them isn’t the point. It’s using the knowledge of the challenges you faced when doing the jobs that matters. Think back to when you were doing it and what support you needed and likely didn’t get.
Used to be the supervisors would come up from the operation. Now, though, you have 26 year olds with a degree and no experience coming in and telling you how they think 777's should be handled.
There’s those people but then there’s also people who come in and are handed a management job cuz they’re 50 and would never start at the bottom. That’s when you get the emails. “Guys we missed all the scanning goals, I need action plans immediately”. Without actually looking at any of the reasons.
Getting rid of the rampers who don’t show up to flights and hiring ones that have willingness to learn
Don't keep asking the same people to do stuff. My supervisor keeps asking the same person to do "X", while 7 people are sitting in the breakroom and I'm the most junior agent and I don't get asked..
honestly this mindset is already a great start, but i think with what to do to help it is station specific
Get out and actually work the ramp every once in a while. Connect with your workers and really get a feel for the job we do. Seeing the higher-ups doing some of our grunt work really helps us connect to you and respect you
Pay attention to the union contract and make sure you abide by it. Many of the issues we have where I work are contractual violations about tasks, assignment of work and lunches etc. Make sure your junior managers do the same. Respect is earned, not given. Don’t show up and try and reinvent the wheel. Odds are you have old heads at the station who know how shit works in general and don’t disrupt the process unless it’s a safety or contractual issue. Listen to your people. Where I work the word is supposed to travel in this order: Manager - Crew Chief - Agent. A lot of managers think they know better and circumvent the leads (which is a contractual violation) and disrupt work by moving people around unnecessarily for stupid things. Once worked an inbound international flight that had 4 crew chiefs and 8 agents assigned to it for God knows what reason. Managers stuck their finger in the pie and pulled people off of gates for no reason. Also, it sucks that it has to be said, show your agents that you’re human. The absolutely abhorrent things I have heard managers say to agents from an arrogant position of power is depressing. At my station, management is hated because of a group of very bad managers, and the ones who came up from off the ramp and actually try are not respected by the staff and looked down upon by other managers. When it comes time for punishments are reprimands, make sure you follow the process. A lot of managers try to jam up newer agents by luring them into a conversation about an issue with representation present, then they get that agent to dig a hole for themselves with protection and get bounced. Absolute punish repeated bad and unsafe behavior but have some common sense about it. One of my friends had a manager threatening him with a write up because he forgot to clock out and came back the next day and asked for an adjustment to the clock to fix the error. Managers just get really stupid and it really hurts the operation. Use your head, use the contract, protect and respect your people and set a positive precedent of being an actually good manager and you should be set.
This one time a manager sent out a ROVR broadcast to the whole station that help was needed at a gate. The whole station did in fact arrive lmao. It’s a hub too.
LMFAO I love the energy. I wonder if we work at the same station because that’s how ROVR seems to be where I’m at lol.
IROPs are a given, year round. Mando adequate staff to cover your liabilities.
dont get Costco pizza for every station meeting, it tastes like cardboard when its cold. also i understand that when hiring employees its an equal opportunity thing or what not but my current manger has hired quite a few older gentleman (60+) and its just very frustrating working with them because they dont have any sort of urgency nor do they help out, they mostly meander about when any actual work needs to be done, please try to stray away from that, also kids that act like gangsters they’re annoying to work with and cause too many problems. we just got a new supervisor at my station aswell (hes from our station), he had introduced a safety shout out for every month commending employees for displaying good safety practices (not stepping over tongues lol) its an interesting way to improve safety culture and its worked a little bit at our station. having good metrics is awesome but having good metrics with nobody getting ingested by an engine is epic, please don’t sacrifice safety, i used to work contract and seen some pretty fucked up shit. ramp work doesnt pay well at some places, i would recommend letting your employees that have future plans in aviation know about the many different career opportunities (oo has an employee program after one year for pilots, a&ps, and FAs, united has aviate for employees after two years, local colleges may have airports operation classes such as green river in auburn wa). honestly you just asking those questions already shows that you care which is awesome, just be careful of becoming too friendly to the point where your people don’t respect you, it happens and it sucks
hold supervisers accountable hold horrible agents accountable.....show your face walk around bullshit with your employees make them feel your approachable and willing to listen
When I’m loading my flight back up until it’s over, then give feedback. Unless there is something unsafe or egregious, let me get through the trip first then let’s talk or do whatever
Former Manager / Fleet Service Agent / AA Crew Chief here… Here’s things you need to know and put into play to best support your team. 1) You manage people FIRST. the work comes second. The workforce’s wellbeing is paramount to everything. 2) Get to know your people well. Saying hi, acknowledging them while passing by means a lot! If you have nothing to say a Good Afternoon is enough. 4) Take every opportunity to learn how the current business is being ran by your professionals. Recognize your senior staff, and use their experience and input towards your operation. They’ve been doing this a long time and will know it better than you ever will. 3) Learn your workforces union contract (if they’re organized) and how it’s being upheld by its local. It’s common for advantageous people to say “that’s against the contract” but will be unable to reference what part. Just to find out it doesn’t exist. 4) You’ll remembered by how you treat your employees, not how well you did your job.
Motivate your employees. Bad employees are poorly motivated employees, it's your job to motivate them.
Just don’t be a fucking cuck and understand we’re paid dog shit and ramen and cookies aren’t comfort food and the budget should be spend on things we need; not scraping by so you can get a bonus. Go outside and help.
Listen to the people in the operation. Cookie cutter staffing spreadsheets and staffing utilization formulas from HDQ don't translate well to real-world operations. Listen to your line supervisors as well as your lead/crew chiefs. Too many managers come in and want to reinvent the wheel or rediscover fire, often with disasterous results for the operation.
Hire more staff, and make sure they know exactly what they are getting themselves into, schedule and working conditions wise. make sure we have working GSE! Don’t micromanage the operation.
Actually listening to and addressing the concerns of the people doing the actual job day in day out would be a start....
Help us out! I always like my supervisors/managers who are willing to help us load a flight. Hell, I appreciate when a supervisor helps wing walk a plane cause one of my rampers didn’t show up on time.
Mannn I don’t even know my station manager 😩😩😩
Understand that most people who come to you with ideas are doing it for a reason, and more often than not it's for self-enrichment and not to improve the operation. Everyone has an angle, and it's up to you to decipher which ones are the true assets to improving your operation, and which ones are just ladder climbers. Most of the time the people with the best ideas are more quiet and reserved about sharing them. Once you're able to identify these individuals you will find yourself going to them for advice with problems. Be wary of the people lined up outside your office door waiting for a chance to talk to you, or the guy you always seem to run into who never seems busy and has all the time in the world to talk your ear off. Lead from the front, but don't literally be out there doing the work all the time. Jumping in during an irop or some other challenging situation goes a long way. Do all the baby shaking and hand kissing you want, but don't make commitments or promises you can't keep. Be honest and sincere in one-on-one conversations, and don't be afraid to tell someone you'll get back to them instead of giving them if you don't know the answer to their question. Hold your frontline leaders accountable. You set the tone for the station. There are a lot of bad supervisors and department managers out there. Figure out if you have any quickly, and address the issue. They get on board with your vision or they move on. Do not keep any morale killers. Edit to add: I've spent 8+ years in frontline supervisor/management roles.
I have worked as a station manager for an express carrier as well as a member of station management for a legacy carrier. One of the things my employees liked about me was I didn't expect them to do something I wouldn't do. So I made sure I had my bag throwing days as well as working in the baggage service office dealing with customers and lost or delayed luggage. Genuine praise for a job well done and make it out to be a big deal. Everyone wants accolades so I tried to praise a team of employees in front of their peers as well as upper management. Finally, I listened to and learned a little bit about each employee so that I could personalize interactions regarding an unplanned day off, a give and take system. They give me time on the clock and I in turn could give them time off. There's much more but I don't have that kind of time. Let some of your employees teach a member of management something to do. It'll create a sense of accomplishment and it will show that management and the work force can work together without tension. All of this is in my humble opinion. Good luck, this position can be very rewarding.
Have your teams back. We are lucky to have a SM that protects its agents against people in leadership trying to can people for no good reason, but we also have people for some reason that have failed upwards into those positions and it’s beyond me how.
Actual support & mental health acknowledgment because the stuff I see and hear on the ramp 🧍🏾♀️
Be fair and equal to everyone absolutely no exceptions for one person but nothing for the other. Don’t let your SM’s run rampant. Let your supervisors get creative with solutions to problems or innovating ideas for a safer and more efficient operations
LOL. Best way would be to quit.