The purpose of this assignment is to explore one of the many HR planning topics we have learned in class, to relate it to a real world example that is linked to a corporate and business strategy, and discuss the implementations it has on HR planning. My topic is on environmental scanning and the effects of COVID19 on Air Canada’s Airlines. The issue relates to the global pandemic of COVID19 that has drastically affected Air Canada’s airlines due to a temporal termination of their facilities. The main idea is to implement the breakdown of Air Canada’s external environment by scanning, monitoring, forecasting, and then accessing. An environmental scan will allow Air Canada to effectively collect its current outlook on the impacts they faced and direct the organizations future plans and objectives and goals.

They begin with scanning the regulations of where they can or cannot fly to. Near the end of January, they had to cancel and suspend all flights to Beijing, Shanghai, and Rome. Then on March 18, Air Canada is forced to suspend all international flights, allowing only to conduct business in a few states in America. By the next month, Air Canada is forced to suspend all of its scheduled flights to America, with only citizens allowing to return home. (AirCanada,2020) Air Canada laid off 20,000 staff, fifty percent of the workforce. (GlobalNews,2020)Next, Air Canada attained important health information from professional healthcare leaders on the virus. From this, they managed and add intensive safety procedures for the organization. (AirCanada) The new policies were to ensure employees and consumers are safe using their operation again. The measures included Cleancare+ that includes a detailed screening analyzation of every consumer, mandatory facial mask covering, intense quality disinfecting cleaning, new touch-less technologies, separation for social distancing, and much more. (Wings,2020) Air Canada is also set to explore contact tracing technology that uses Bluetooth as a wearable technology and assesses an individual to help decrease the spread of COVID19. (CM Staff, 2020) In the monitoring stage, a systematic approach in recognizing the financial impact and the supply/demand of consumers. Air Canada reported revenues that declined 89 percent and have lost revenue from 1-2 billions of dollars in its latest quarters. This was the first in 27 consecutive quarters that they did not report operating revenue growth. (Newswire,2020) The demand has lowered by 96 percent at its highest when the government has closed all boarder restrictions across countries. They have received a 364-day term loan of 600 million dollars partially from the governments help. They are expected to lose one billion worth of shares. (Newswire) From the staggering amount of lost money, Air Canada will have to forecast an attempt to find solutions to adept and emerge successfully from this crisis. In the short-term they have added different benefits and strategies to overcome their loss. First, when the flights were cancelled they had to refund their customers. They announced a new COVID-19 refund policy where the consumer has two options. Option one is a fully transferable voucher with no expiry, or option two they can convert their ticket to Aeroplan Miles, Air Canadas loyalty program. (Macgragor,2020) They partnered up with Manulife to add insurance benefits with a purchase of a flight to attain more consumers. They have also added unlimited travel for one monthly fee between September 16-23rd within Canada. Lastly, is the assess, and the probability of this happening again. The end date of the virus is unknown, and vaccines can take up two years to be fully developed. With the second wave here, it seems that there may be a possibility that it will still be here for another while. Air Canada states that it will take at least three years to fully recover to the state it was at 2019. (Bloomberg,2020) It is important managers prepare for future shocks by developing a common strategy language, and introduce uncertainty as a standard factor for the organization. (Linden, 2020)

At this level due to the economic environmental scanning, Air Canadas corporate level strategy is focused on restructuring. The dynamic environment has caused an emergent strategy where they are going through traumatic changes that the COVID19 affected their business. Although they are at a liquidation state at the moment, they are getting major help from government to survive, thus their intended startey is restructure and find soulutions to get back to business.They are at a turnaround staraetgy, where they are doing everything in their power to attempt to increase the viability of the organization from developing plans to over go a more and efficient differentiation as a business unit strategy. As a business unit strategy, Air Canada is a differentiator in nature due to the level of service it gives to its consumers. With the procedures of introducing the Cleancare+, benefits with aeroplan, insurance benefirs, Aircanada provides unique services that delivers outstanding customer services to the needs of its customers. Air Canada connects its philosophy by valuing its customers and by adding effective measure to ensure they receive the highest levels of safety for air travel. The strategy flows from the corporate strategy as restructuring, and then as a business strategy as a difeerentiatior, to implement programs and procedures to ensure safery is valued to their consumers and providing the best service to enhance the consumers practises. Air Canada has adapted the highest level of safety

The learning material we can take out of the environmental scanning topic is the four sub sectors of scanning, monitoring, forcasting, and assessing. In the scanning stage Air Canada acknowledges the regulations and then developed policies in their workforce for a graduare reconstruction of their organization.