February 27, 2007 – Connecting to the Business

Hi, it's Glenn. It's Tuesday, the 27th of February, and I'm calling from Chicago.

To deliver the best possible experience to our customers, every employee has to understand more than simply the fundamentals of good service. We have to know the goals of the company and how each of us contributes to accomplishing these goals in the jobs that we perform. Making those connections drives performance and creates the gap between companies that lead their industries and companies that follow.

The challenge for every organization is building those connections from the ground up. To begin that process at United, we've launched a companywide Business Education training program this year for all United employees. The program has three important components: one day of Business Education for all employees, one day of leadership training for leaders with direct reports and one day of service training for employees who work directly with our customers. All three days are designed to ensure each of us has a clear and consistent understanding of our strategy to guide us as we take the company forward.

This morning, I'll be participating in a Business Education session here in Chicago. For more details on the training, I'll turn the call over to Diane Sawyer, who has led the team's effort to design and implement this important program. Diane, over to you...

Diane:

Thanks, Glenn. Rolling out this program is one of the most important steps we're taking to provide all our employees the tools and training they need to deliver the customer experience that you just talked about. It's about ensuring all of us understand our company's priorities, the role we play in meeting our goals and the impact the decisions we make every day have on our customers, our fellow employees and our investors. In the training, we talk a lot about how balancing those decisions is critical to our success going forward.

We're in our third week of training with the leaders of the company, and we're very pleased so far with the feedback we're getting. All of our leaders will attend two days of training – the business education course and the leadership day. All of that will occur in February and March, and then we will begin the roll-out to our front-line, salaried and remaining management employees.

To accomplish the goals we set out for the program, we've designed days that are very interactive. We create different experiences in the training. We ask participants to run an airline. We have a lot of discussion about different kinds of service challenges so people around their tables can understand the impact their decisions have on our business, each other and our other stakeholders.

Specifically, in Business Education, we cover industry basics like terminology and metrics. We give an overview of our strategy and discuss how to manage through everyday business issues. On the leadership day, we give leaders tools to engage, align, enable and motivate employees. And on the customer service day, we'll work with employees who interact directly with our customers to ensure we are delivering a consistent United service experience.

In the sessions we've conducted so far, the true value we've seen is in the opportunity for conversation. We don't have a lot of time across our very busy operation to sit in cross-functional groups with our colleagues and talk. In this training, we've had some very frank conversations about the challenges and opportunities we face and, most important, the role we can all play in stepping up to them. Having officers participate in and lend their perspective to the business education day has been one important way we've demonstrated the roles leaders can play. It's also shown that our senior team believes in the importance of the work we have under way.

No one is under any illusions that one training program will finish the job. We are at the beginning of a long process to ensure we all have the information, tools and motivation to deliver the experience our customers expect, but I'm very encouraged by the openness of the conversations and by the sense of commitment we've seen demonstrated.

Glenn...

Thanks, Diane. We appreciate the update. In a previous session that I attended with many of my colleagues, the engagement that you describe is exactly what we experienced. I'm looking forward to attending today's session and hearing the conversation and insight from participants all across the company.

And, Diane, your point about sustainability is one that I'd like to pick up on. We're all making a significant investment in this training and, as you correctly point out, it cannot be the last investment that we make to ensure our employees understand our company's priorities and their role in successfully executing against our goals. Ultimately, sustaining the learning and message of this program is a key, day-to-day opportunity for all of us who attend the program.

Taking United forward into the future is up to all of us. We have to make the differences necessary to create the company that we want. We have done the work to create a platform to compete, and now it's our time to do so. That is really the core message of the training. It's up to us to listen and act on that message.

That's all for now. I'll be talking to you again soon. Until then, stay focused on our customers, and on one another... and stay united.