Singapore Airlines Reviews

Pros

Perks of travelling and good pay.

Cons

constant Jetlag and missed holidays .

Pros

The equivalence of a working duration compared to an off day awarded was relatively higher than a ground job when a comparison was done

Cons

Staff working at the control centre treated the cabin crew staff without respect, generally it was difficult to achieve a compromise easily when urgent leave was needed.

Pros

Free / cheap travel.
Reasonable working hours.
Frequent job rotations (can be a bad thing for some people).

Cons

Low salary.
Bureacratic working environment.
Micro-management from the top.
HR policies favour the more senior staff (good for retirees, not good for young people).

Advice to Senior Management

Place more emphasis on improving your HR policies, instead of the constant cost-cutting. There's a reason why all the younger staff are resigning.

Pros

Good staff welfare, free air tickets, very slow paced (good for retirement), good company brand name, good profit sharing bonus.

Cons

Unfriendly and competitive culture, rigid rules and regulations in job rotation and career developments, extreme east location and inaccessibility to workplace.

Advice to Senior Management

Should really listen to feedbacks from staff. The management only verbally encourage feedbacks and yet when there are feedbacks given, no work is ever done in improving the issue addressed.

Pros

SIA has good reputation and people admire you working there. It also gives good benefit to employee like cheap sports club membership, etc.

Cons

the only bad thing about sia is the basic pay is very low. In normal or bad years, it's far below market rate.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest more money and resource into technical infrastructure. Don't just focus on customer service. Without a strong back office support, ur frontline staff can only do that much..

Pros

Able to travel around the world , meet different kinds of people and always make new friends on flight. Able to get the things you want which you cant find back home.

Cons

Seniority plays a big role and work evaluation is mostly based on years of contribution, rather than the quality. Jet lagged.

Advice to Senior Management

Overall leadership is still ok. Company should show more recognition to crew and understand more on the welfare of all employees.

Pros

The brand name associated with working in THE Singapore Airlines in the aviation industry.

Travel benefits -However these are poor compared to what other airlines offer to their employees.

Cons

Poor HR policies. For example, Junior executives are guaranteed - yes guaranteed -annual promotions during their 1st 2 to 3 years at SIA. Such a policy encourages the lazy ones take their feet off the accelerator while fustrate the "go-getters".

Advice to Senior Management

Some questions you need to ask yourself:

1) What are the real reasons why we have relaxed the intake requirements for new hires? Is SIA really expanding so fast we are unable to quench our demand for talents with the limited number of the cream of each cohort or are we unable to attract the best anymore? I

2) What is the real reason why the bulk of the young executives who left SIA are all described with words like "intelligent", "initiated", "go-getter", "driven", "smart" and they usually have excellent work and academic performance (at least those that I know) ? Are we unable to keep people with such characteristics? Is the company bettter off without these people?

3) What do you really think of people break their scholarship bonds(if they can) to leave the company and those, who are less financially well-off, leave within months after their bond ends? You assessed them as capable and worthy of investment at the point of awarding of the scholarship. Why do they not want to stay?

4) Do you see the poor staff retention as a problem?

5) Do you think it is appropriate that the FIRST HR initiative that SIA implemented after the storm that is the sub-prime crisis, which require your stuff to take 10% pay cut and be on no-pay leave for 1 year, is: to raise the entry pay of all fresh hire without adjusting the pay scale of those who stuck with the company during the bad time ? Yes the paycut was restored. But is it appropriate that these new blood will earn the same or more than some of those who are with the company for years? BTW, this remains unresolved 1 year after the said initiative was implemented.

Pros

management engagement, learnings & development, staff rapport,

Cons

lack of transparency in staff promotions

Advice to Senior Management

More opportunities to allow staff to rotate base on their career development interests

Pros

Good brand name easily recogisable anywhere in the world.

Cons

SIA is seen by many undergraduates as one of the most sought after companies to work for. Unfortunately, that image crumbles soon after joining the company.. the bureaucracy and hap hazard mindset of management are amazing. Many staff would leave if they could..

Advice to Senior Management

Grow up! Dont think that everyone has to suit your whims and fancy.

Pros

Whenever we travel by Singapore Airlines on work trips, we get upgraded to First Class, if there is space, or Business Class. If both premium classes are full, then we travel by Economy Class.
Most of the time, new recruits are not given much of an introduction or much supervision on the work that they will be handling. New recruits are generally thrown into the deep end right from the beginning, so you learn to cope and adapt fast. Also, since jobscopes are generally not well-defined, or not adhered to, new recruits end up doing a lot of things for their seniors. This results in increased exposure to people from all over the company, as well as outside vendors etc.
The reason why a lot of people work for Singapore Airlines (or continue to do so, despite the environment, policies, etc) is that once you get to a certain rank, you will get one free First Class ticket to any destination, once a year.

Cons

The political scene at Singapore Airlines is quite brutal. There is a pecking order where the marketing division calls the shots. The cabin crew division is next most important, and divions that are seen as having supporting roles, like engineering division, are at the bottom of the food chain.
The management in Singapore Airlines are more interested in approportioning blame than solving problems and getting the job done. The management are also very concerned about "covering ass", to the extent that it is having very detrimental effects. For example, a lot of managers are starting to not make simple decisions and insisting on senior managers, vice presidents and other higher ranking management making the decision. This takes up a lot of time and does not add any value to the project.
There is also a lot of backstabbing going on.
One of the biggest problems at Singapore Airlines is that it does not matter how good you are at your job - as long as you are favoured by the management, you can do absolutely nothing and still get promoted. The reverse is also true - once you fall out of favour with the management, you will continually be bullied and bypassed for promotion even if you work 80 hour weeks and make no mistakes.
The management is very petty and unreceptive to feedback. Criticism, even when constructive, is taken personally. The management has a record of punishing employees who give feedback that is deemed to be critical of them.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to feedback, and do not take it personally. Otherwise, nobody will give feedback for fear of punishment, which is the current situation.
Be less prideful. It is ok to admit that mistakes have been made. Your employees will not respect you any less. They might also be proud of working for someone with such humility.
Favouritism should not be practiced to the extent that one can do absolutely nothing and still get promoted. It is also very unfair to expect other people to take up the slack when favoured employees do not do their work.
Be more rational and realistic. Sometimes, it may not be worth spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to change something just because a few customer complaints are received in a year. We are a world-class airline, and it takes a lot to keep our position at the top of the pack, but a cost-benefit analysis should be done before we jump into incorporating improvements to every single complaint received.
Act like senior management. Rudeness is unnecessary.
If you ask for advice, at least consider it when it is given. If you do not want advice, then don't ask for it.
Do not keep joking about work-life balance. When somebody asks about work-life balance and you ask "What's that?" it stops being funny the second time you say it.
Respect your employees. Respect their right to a work-life balance. Respect that they may not be free to come in to the office on weekends. Respect that they are not obliged to be at your beck and call 24 hours a day.