The Standouts

Aretha Franklin demanded it. Rodney Dangerfield couldn’t beg, borrow or steal it. The rest of us try to earn respect the old-fashioned way, by paying our bills, standing up for the occasional principle and just plain doing the right thing. But it can’t be bought or sold

Jun 1, 2007  

by Tom Keyser

Prized in equal measure by ranch hands, roughnecks, cab drivers and silk-suited captains of industry, respect is the sole commodity in the global marketplace that doesn’t carry a sticker price.

And WestJet’s still got it, along with record load factors, unprecedented profits and the devotion of loyal Western Canadian fans as fervent as the leather-lunged aficionados who root for small-market NHL teams.

Judging from the opinions of the plugged-in business people who read Alberta Venture, the authors of one of Alberta’s most endearing and enduring corporate success stories have virtually cornered the market on this intangible, invaluable asset.

Results of our survey prove it beyond doubt. According to those who took part, WestJet Airlines Ltd. leaves landing-gear tire tracks all over the backsides of most other transportation outfits, sweeping them aside in terms of respect for corporate performance, innovation, branding, human resources and community involvement.

Analyst Ben Cherniavsky of Raymond James calls it the home-field advantage.
“Most Albertans definitely share a certain amount of pride in the accomplishments of WestJet,” Cherniavsky points out.

“I remember back when the company started out, there was an immediate attraction for most of us. Of course, we should acknowledge that WestJet has done a lot of things right, although in some respects they’ve been shooting at easy targets within the Canadian airline industry,” the analyst adds with a dash of dry sarcasm.

WestJet hasn’t cornered the market on hometown-hero status, however. While plenty of international players – the Canadian arms of Dow and IBM among them – made a positive impression on AV readers, survey respondents reserved most of their gold stars for local prodigies such as Running Room Ltd., EnCana Corporation and Edmonton’s venerable PCL Construction Group Inc. Of course, there’s much more at play here than a parochial rooting interest. Alberta’s business elite is traditionally a sucker for a hard-body bottom line and each of these homebrew heavyweights keeps nudging the bar higher on that score.

But clearly CEO Clive Beddoe, president Sean Durfy and WestJet’s 5,900 wise-cracking pilots, attendants and check-in staff can draw upon an almost limitless fund of consumer goodwill. Survey results indicate it was hardly tarnished by WestJet’s lamentable lapse into sophomoric spy games, which came to a head last year when Beddoe issued a public mea culpa and paid a $15.5-million penalty. WestJet shareholders were mortified when the CEO wearily conceded that WestJet had resorted to cyber-skulduggery to sneak a peek at confidential Air Canada files – not once, but thousands of times. But even here, WestJet’s continued lofty status proves the airline made the right call to settle with Air Canada and put the controversy behind it rather than prolong a high-profile lawsuit. And presumably the incident taught the airline to straighten up and fly right, because respect is slippery, even for small market giant-killers. It’s hard to earn, easy to lose and almost impossible to recapture once it’s gone.

Aside from this regrettable episode, WestJet has kept up consistently high performance and service standards while developing a “remarkable and enviable” culture, as Cherniavsky put it last year. WestJet also rewards performance, dispensing more than $76 million in profit-sharing during the last 10 years while encouraging its employees to participate in an attractive share-purchase plan.

Beddoe reiterated in Victoria last winter that WestJet encourages its people to “think like owners,” an attitude which contributed to a $114.7-million profit in 2006. In many ways, the salient question is this: Why don’t more corporate execs hang their stuffed shirts in the closet, and learn from WestJet’s example? As Beddoe once jested to a colleague in a hallway at Calgary HQ: “Have fun or you’re fired.” At WestJet, those words represent a corporate credo.

Readers also lavished praise on Running Room, ahead of much larger retailers, citing its fresh approach to marketing, the strength of its human resources model and a stunning acumen for promotions and public relations.

Current Issue