In today’s constantly shifting, tight margin landscape, aviation organisations need people who can access, analyse and act on information faster, who are resilient and collaborative, and who are motivated to do the best job they can every day. But IATA research shows that HR leaders in aviation are concerned about skills, quality of leadership and future talent in the industry.
Ground Handling International’s 2nd HR Aviation conference brought together HR practitioners and leading thinkers to explore some of the issues facing organisations and to offer some practical solutions and roadmaps. One of the main elements to emerge from the two days was that of trust: no organisation can function properly unless this is at the very root of its ethical code.
Here follows a taster of the things we learnt.
Engagement a priority
Firstly, the aviation market needs to do a lot more to engage its people, as labour productivity falls.
“It’s the people who keep us safe,” stressed Sarah Flaherty of IHP Solutions. “However, aviation is really good at the ‘stuff’ but not so good at people.”
“This is a problem,” confirmed Michael Jenkins of Roffey Park Institute, as research findings from McKinsey Global Institute suggest that, unless increases in labour productivity compensate for an ageing workforce, there will be a near 40% drop in GDP growth rates and a roughly 20% drop in the growth rate of per capita income around the world in the next 50 years. Yet in a workshop on employee engagement run by founder of The Global Growth Institute, Wayne Clarke, we discovered that only 10-15% of employees genuinely care about moving their business forward. So, while CEOs and the board want their managers to be more growth focused, caring, productive, responsive and collaborative, the reality on the ground is that people are disengaged and unlikely to go the extra mile for your organisation unless you really ‘walk the talk’.
Diversity a factor
Another interesting revelation was that diversity in leadership improves commercial performance in the aviation sector.
Lars Jeschio of global executive search and leadership firm Egon Zehnder shared findings from a survey of 1,300 senior executives from 73 of the world’s leading airlines. Fewer than 5% of CEOs and 13% of top executives are female, while only 18% of airline executives differ in nationality from their airline. Yet low cost carriers perform better and have significantly higher diversity; and among the 15 economically top-performing airlines in the study, there is a higher diversity of top executives across nearly all criteria compared to the remaining airlines. The commonly-shared airline industry pattern is “male, mono-cultural and engineering heavy,” explained Jeschio. Where women are more prevalent it is in the HR, Legal and PR functions, while national diversity is more prevalent in Pacific and MEA airlines, which rely on international talent, given the shallow local talent pools. Why does this matter? Cluster models demonstrate that the most diverse airlines have superior economic performance, with a more dynamic, decision-ready leadership culture founded on a well-defined and strictly executed business model. The lesson here is that those in HR need to become more active in driving transformation where diversity of talent is a key element.
Risk management
A final observation: strike a balance when it comes to managing risk.
Steve Girdler, CEO at HireRight, pointed out that 40% of large companies screen graduates in a more robust way than their executive level hires and promotions. A show of hands in the room backed this up. This opens up risk, said Girdler, pointing to some high profile examples of global CEOs who have lied about their experience and brought their company into reputational disrepute and, in some cases, like the UK’s Co-operative Group, even financial meltdown. However, there is always a balance to be found between the candidate experience and company needs, and nowhere is this more marked than in aviation, with its high screening bar. To keep candidates engaged at every stage it is vital to regularly communicate with them, he stressed. With frequent regulation changes, it is crucial that HR teams keep updated to remain compliant. There is a trend in aviation for submitted documents to become inadmissible for minor reasons and the need for hard copy documents can slow the process. With the world now digital, did Girdler see these hard copy requirements changing in the future? Yes he did, he replied, much to the relief of those in the room.
