Page 170 - Anne Bruce - Building A HIgh Morale Workplace (2002)

150 Building a High Morale Workplace

Continental Raises Employees’
Hopes After Disaster
Airline employees suffered great losses after the September
11 attacks and furloughs for many became inevitable.To build employ-
ee hope following the furlough of 4,000 employees, Continental
Airlines offered its employees several options: severance payments, the
opportunity to transfer to another city or position, and the “promise”
of a job when things got better. Continental’s actions sent a brave
message of hope and trust that its employees would not be forgotten
in the wake of the tragedy.

nization’s vision. And this can have a dramatic impact and influ-

ence on the organization’s eventual success.
Take Bill Gates as an example. When he founded Microsoft
in 1975, he had a hope and a vision—“a computer on every
desk and in every home.” He started as a college dropout work-

ing in his garage and has revolutionized the way people all over
the globe live and do business. Is hope powerful? You bet.
Great managers are dreamers. And when they have hope,
that hope inspires those dreams as well as the people who will
help make them a reality.

Here’s an example. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of
Amazon.com, has certainly taken the roller coaster ride of Wall
Street on more than one occasion, but through it all he’s never
relinquished his greatest hope and dream for Amazon—from

being a successful online bookstore that changed the
economics of the book
What Is Hope? industry to becoming the

What is hope? How do you
most phenomenal cyber-
define it? The following
quote might help to guide you: store with the world’s
largest selection of books,
“Hope begins in the dark, the stub-
born hope that if you just show up videos, music, and more.
and try to do the right thing, the This is what’s called “hope
dawn will come.You wait and watch in motion,” based on a
and work: you don’t give up.” dream that continues to
—Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird evolve.