I work with all the HA on a daily basis. I must admit i have a soft spot for Swissport as I have known a lot of there staff for a number of years now. I agree with a lot the points mentioned on here and im sure even swissport management do. However it i snot entirely fair to blame management all the time. Sometimes the staff have to take a deep hard look at themselves as well and see what they can do to improve the situation.
Only a few days ago I was speaking to a member of the HR dept at swissport and she mentioned a few of the key problems which sum up this thread. Some of the problems are :
1 - Team leaders on the ramp who cannot pushback, headset, marshall or even drive!! This I put down to management.
2- In the ops dept there are staff who work 3 months in the year and take the remainder of the year of sick. This also happens in ramp and pax.
3- Also in ops there are disptachers/load controllers who can not even do airbridges, manual loadsheets and even 1 staff member who has been in the ops dept for 8 years and can not do a computerised loadsheet. And worse off all there are staff who can not even drive or Dispatch!! A dispatcher who can not dispatch, this is a problem!!. Is there training available? If not I blame the managemt and if there is i blame the staff for being lazy and not pushing themselves forward for training.
A lot of the poor performance is a diredct result of the above problems. I think if the management actually sit down with the workers(not department managers who normally dont have a clue) they could resolve these problems between them. I have seen a lot of good staff go and there experience not replaced by the person who takes over the role.
I really hope swissport turn things around and become the best again. Also dont think that the other handling agents dotn have problems. I deal with all of them and know that they hav eexactly the same problems. Only difference being they dont slag of theor own companies ON PPRUNE!!!