Any standard capability policy would do that. One thing I have learnt through being a rep, is that fellow employees are far more critical than any management team. It doesn't take to much effort so work out who would be a safe target for a capable management team.
The biggest single issue is that crews work as teams, but very rarely are they a team that knows the strength and weaknesses of each other in a big airline. That is the team of 15 or 10 or 4, will in all probability never fly together more than a handful of times through their entire careers. BA may have 2000 engineers, but the team breakdown is governed by shifts, who work together every day. Peer pressure about letting your mates down happens and you have competition between shifts, some good some bad.
I am not saying the flying community is unique, but there are not too many places where you have a workforce of 10000+ at one base, that don't know the in's and out's of at least 40 fellow colleagues.
I have to be really sick not to go in, because I personally know who will be working extra to cover for me. Do crew? That is not to say that anything more than a small minority of crew actually go sick because they don't care however.
With the invention of the Bradford Factor, sickness is a prime measure in redundancy situations in big workforces today, which has lead to people going in, when they should not. I will not let a cold lead to my redundancy in the future.
It would appear that we have more in common than I had originally imagined and your remarks about 'teams' are interesting. My work as a field service engineer positions me somewhere between yourself - in the workshop with the same 'team' of engineers around you - and the CC who, as you say, are obliged to work as a team grown more or less instantly in (I guess) the CRC?
Although I work, mostly, on my own I nevertheless consider myself to be part of a very strong team. A team who see the installed base as 'our machines' and feel responsible for the high performance of the equipment for our customers - specifically
patients. As others have pointed out companies like mine - a big, big American one easy to guess - have very ordered structures for how we should do business, but it is my belief that we FEs work better than expected, because of the way we identify with our customers/patients and see
ourselves as a team.
Perhaps small teams - I cannot even begin to suggest any detail for the CC situation - might be a way forward? They can be performance reviewed more easily and may well begin to feel the encouragement, support and 'can doism' available from working in an obviously close and functional team.
I hope you are feeling better, by the way!
Roger.