Fun at Work - The Southwest Airlines Way!

A Southwest flight attendant said this as the door was opened at the end of a flight: "OK, now I'm going to tell you exactly what my Mama told me on my 18th birthday. GET OUTTA HERE."

From a Southwest Airlines employee: "There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out of this airplane." 


"Weather at our destination is 50 degrees with some broken clouds, but they'll try to have them fixed before we arrive. Thank you, and remember, nobody loves you or your money more than Southwest Airlines."

:-) smile smile smile!

The above are just some fun comments made by Southwest employees during their normal day to day duties. Majority of us would probably find it hard to fathom that this can be told to clients especially in the service industry

Working with clients we are normally dictated to by an inside power that the process is : plastic smile, plastic greeting, how can I assist you, oh we are so sorry, that is wonderful, serious face, thank you very much, have a wonderful day, another plastic smile... then serious face. huh? ring a bell?

Fun at work is a culture that is nurtured and grown. Most of us humans are fun beings and given a choice to be serious or serious and fun, we will most likely take the latter. However, sub-versions are created that have us shedding the fun and we end up with "plastic employees"

"Something unusual is going on at Southwest Airlines. Everyone is happy. They all kiss and hug, even President Colleen Barrett and CEO Gary Kelly. Average Southwest employees like the big bosses. They want to get their picture taken with Kelly. They admire him."


How do we get this fun? It all starts in the hiring process. The Southwest Airlines interviews are nutty in as much as they are serious, amongst the most meticulous.. The interviews are designed to get that extra thing from an individual. Using the seventh sense.... (now that common sense became the sixth sense)

Libby Sartain, vice president of the People Department, says,only half-jokingly, that taking a job with Southwest is like joining a cult. The ultimate employee is someone whose devotion to customer and company amounts to “a sense of mission, a sense that ‘the cause’ comes before their own needs.”
Colmenares speaks in the same near-spiritual terms. What’s he looking for in a candidate? “An attitude,” he says. “A genuineness- a sense of what it takes to be one of us.”

Secondly all employees must feel valued. If they feel valued, then they feel part of the organization. When someone feels part of something, chances are they will give they heart to the job and why not have some fun while at it?
Actually, the best companies at this value their employees more than they value their customers!

"You put your employees first and if you take care of them, then they will take good care of you," Herb Kelleher, the airline's chairman, said. "Then your customers will come back, and your shareholders will like that, so it's really a unity."

Managements need to realise that the organization culture is a mirror of their actual selves. FUN at the workplace begins with them. When the CEO is smiling, everyone smiles, when the CEO laughs heartily with employees and at their jokes, it creates AMAZING rapport. The horrible truth is that the OPPOSITE of the above is also true......

Kellher (former CEO) has his fun, and it has trickled all the way down.... (he even chose a wrestling arm match to settle a certain dispute :-) )

Crazy but true....