Sabre says they care about people and culture, but never forget that profits always come first. That is not unique to Sabre, but the fundamental nature of capitalism and investment. Our economy, and especially the trickle-down economic system we subscribe to, is geared toward an upward movement of resources and wealth. This is why the middle class in our country has been stagnant and even declined slightly for decades, while the middle classes in countries like India and China have seen exponential growth and America's own top 1% now hold 50% of its wealth. Companies (ironically, with hard-working Americans as their agents) are getting more and more efficient every day at facilitating that upward movement of wealth, and keeping us either content with the situation, or having our anger directed at each other under the guise of political differences. In reality, parties are irrelevant because all any American wants – Democrat or Republican – is life, freedom, and happiness for themselves and their families. We want to put food on our tables, be healthy, comfortable, and watch our children grow up and be happy so we can die in peace with a sense of fulfillment. The singular focus of major corporations on separating Americans from our wealth, opportunities, and control over our government – and the increasing success they're having in doing so – is the biggest threat to that dream we have ever faced. The only thing necessary for dystopic works of fiction (where everyone outside of the 1% is poor and powerless) to become reality within 1-2 generations is for current trends to continue.
Many companies strike an appropriate balance between facilitating that upward movement of wealth and doing right by customers and employees on a humanistic level. Their executives develop business cases that demonstrate positive ROI for internal and cultural initiatives that will make employees happier AND more productive, but they also move beyond the business cases and evangelize for the positive benefits of a happy workplace. There is a human aspect to all of this that requires executives, boards, and shareholders to move beyond profits sometimes and do what is right. Companies are already inherently bought into this idea at a high level: it's what helps them maintain some semblance of ethics and not outright lie, cheat, and steal (even though some would say it happens anyway to some degree).
Sabre is less invested in this paradigm than most. It invests in culture initiatives, but barely: what is our Culture VP's budget? Culture-oriented initiatives tend to be superficial at best. Occasional improvements to things like paid leave for new parents are great for optics, but an incredible amount of math goes into forecasting their costs and ensuring that Sabre can balance it out (and even come out ahead) elsewhere, e.g. no longer paying out PTO on separation.
One of the biggest components of a constructive culture is one where Sabre utterly fails and is unwilling to improve: transparency. There is an ever increasing number of management-level employees who are losing their insight into what's coming, and no longer understand the reasoning for decisions that are made. Leaders at the VP and SVP level are less likely than ever to hold or keep meetings with their reports, often because they themselves don't have the clarity or stability to communicate in a transparent and consistent manner. Sabre cannot be trusted to do what it says.
The recent "strategic partnership" announcement with Google is one of the clearest examples of Sabre's broken perspective. Something as mundane as signing a cloud contract with a new IT provider becomes a big PR splash with special talking points sent to managers and press releases out on the wire. How does Sabre's stock price react to this? It lost 2.2% that day: normal intraday movement, because industry analysts and institutional investors know that this has exactly 0 significance. Why does Sabre treat this as something employees should be talking about so excitedly? Because executives believe employees don't know any better. And because and it's better than nothing.
If Sabre wants real improvement, it should ask employees questions that matter and give them authentic opportunities to provide candid and direct feedback to executives. Most of Sabre's employees have never even spoken with a senior leader and find the prospect of doing so to be intimidating. This has to change, and it needs to go beyond Culture Club, which is essentially a group therapy outlet for Sabre employees and leverages a single VP as a filter for all feedback coming through. Employees can and should feel empowered to have a more direct line of input to things happening around them. Senior leaders must become more approachable. For those who feel their work/life balance has been thoroughly compromised, an infographic about email and meeting effectiveness is not a solution. Neither was "no meeting Wednesdays," which did little except create more gaps in people's calendars for VPs/SVPs to schedule the meetings that they deemed important: shining proof that senior leaders are not bought into our culture-oriented initiatives.
This improvement does not happen in the USA (other offices have more unique cultures appropriate for their regions) because it will not be profitable or useful for Sabre. Most employees are captive because they are either insecure in their other employment prospects, too close to retirement age, or are immigrants whose visa status or green card applications would be compromised by a change in employment. The ROI to Sabre for making any more than superficial investments in people and culture is simply not there, and our executive leadership is less focused on this than on trying to find a path to delivering on the lofty commitments the company has made, and making our financials look palatable to shareholders.
Let's start the conversation ourselves. What do YOU want to see change at Sabre? What would really help you do your best work?