CA recently announced they will be opening new offices in Asia and Western Europe and will be offering non-stop flights to Tokyo, Madrid, and Barcelona as part of its published 10-year growth strategy into the international market. A new reservation center is also slated to open in Madrid with some US-based employees moving to Spain to start training new staff. CA is not currently part of a major airline alliance or partnership and the CEO hopes that expanding to international destinations will spur other airlines to consider a partnership with the airline company.

With the expectation that these international flights will commence in 15-months, the CEO realizes the organization does not have the internal capacity to manage all aspects of this growth plan. CAs’ leadership team has identified additional focus areas that are critical to success:

• Navigate through the numerous international compliance demands and risks of moving into this market
• Train new European employees on CAs’ existing reservation system and all employees about the new, streamlined business processes that will be implemented in all offices
• Engage key stakeholders through communication and change management activities about upcoming changes

CAs’ CEO and Board of Directors are seeking assistance from Deloitte in creating and implementing a growth strategy implementation plan. The plan must include a timeline and recommendations on how to address the international compliance demands, change management activities, and establishing a training plan so all employees are ready on day one. 

Key considerations:

• US-based CA employees are unionized, while new employees in Madrid are not. Furthermore, there are differences in the labor laws in the US and Spain that determine things such as pay structure, dress code, and overtime pay.
• CA has not decided which employees will be transferring to the Madrid office and there has been little communication. There is some employee resentment surrounding the apparently subjective selection process.
• The CA reservation web site will be modernized in the next few months to accommodate customers’ online booking of new international flights. There is currently no training plan for CAs’ help desk employees on how to use the new web site.