Women Leaders Stress Pandemic Diversity Focus

While acknowledging that maintaining diversity and inclusion goals can be difficult as the workforce reshapes during the Covid-19 pandemic, industry leaders believe the issue should remain a priority to prepare organizations to better prepare for the future. . Four senior executives and senior officials noted that Thursday’s appearance during a FIA Connect 2020 session led by Women in Aviation and Charter Charter, an initiative launched during the 2018 Farnborough Airshow and one that has attracted more than 200 companies that sign up to work towards more gender balance at all levels of the industry.

“We believe it is more important than ever to highlight this topic as companies in the sector strive to restructure in response to crises. The various forces, far-sighted and cooperative, we believe, will be integral to help organizations recover and cope with the future with confidence, “said Rolls-Royce Civil Aviation Client Chief Jacqui Sutton, who moderated the panel on behalf of the card.

Sutton said a recent study by McKinsey and Company underscores that trust, finding companies ranked in the top quarter for gender diversity in executive teams were 21 percent more likely to outperform profit and 27 percent more likely to generate superior “value creation”.

Kelly Tolhurst MP, UK Department of Transport Minister for Aviation, Maritime and Security, agreed. She noted that work reports have made “very difficult to read” and stressed her focus on working to keep as much work as possible. “Against this background, it may be difficult to look forward, but we need to. We will recover from this pandemic and how the urgent need for technical skills will increase,” Tolhurst said. “As our sector recovers from the impact of the coronavirus, we must ensure that we pave the way for an industry that is diverse and inclusive.”

She added that the topic “remains as urgent now as before”, showing statistics showing that women pilots represent only 6 per cent of the total pilot population. While piloting is just one position, it presents wider challenges across the industry, she said.

She expressed support for the charter initiative and noted other ongoing efforts, such as the Reach for the Sky program, designed to inspire future aviators. Despite the pandemic, those initiatives continue, she said, with events moving online and ambassadors being appointed and actively involved.

“The whole world is in crisis and our industry is one of the biggest shocks,” added Adefunke Adeyemi, regional director for advocacy and strategic relations for Africa for the International Air Transport Association (IATA). She acknowledged the many guarantees, but expressed confidence that the industry is resilient and will adapt through strong communications and an understanding that industry stakeholders share in the fighting.

Given these difficulties, she said IATA has shifted its goals towards promoting inclusion and diversity through mentoring and promotion from within rather than difficult metrics.

On that front, IATA initiatives have seen success, she said, one of which was the “25by2025” campaign launched in September 2019. Participating airlines make a voluntary commitment to increase the number of women in senior positions by 25 percent or to ensure women fill 25 percent of those jobs by 2025. By the end of last year, nearly 60 airlines had completed.

The idea focuses on using analytics to focus on how industry can best engage and take a deliberate approach to ensure businesses attract, retain and promote women in senior positions, she said. That means “playing the gender card type,” Adeyemi said. “It was created to address the problems of conscious prejudice, as well as the tendency of women themselves not to be biased.”

The program should be purposeful to work with and ensure that organizations not only express their approval, but “walk in the conversation.”

“If it is not done this way, the needle would not move,” she said. Pointing to the growing turnout, she said she has seen progress.

However, “with the pandemic, everything came to a halt,” she said. As a result, IATA will not focus on the methods involved so much at the moment, but rather on efforts such as its “Mosaic” initiative created to promote inclusion and diversity. She designed that effort to encourage the promotion of women who meet the criteria and have merit, as well as encouraging others to achieve with the help of coaching and mentoring.

Such issues also apply to the needs of racial diversity. “We need to think about how we include racial minorities in the mainstream of the industry,” Adeyemi said. As with gender diversity, efforts should be intentional, but they may not be a simple gender card game. Rather, they should provide competence through training to ensure an available workforce, she said.

Victoria Foy, CEO of UK-based Safran Seat GB, agreed that like other companies, Safran has faced “a wave of change” during the pandemic that has made the ability to maintain diversity and inclusion challenging in mind . However, she added that Safran is already well positioned, paving the way for meeting UN inclusion standards. As such it has managed to maintain a focus through several ways, including terrain and surveys to provide an understanding of the concerns during the pandemic.

However, in the long run, the data can identify gaps and areas that need targeting, either at the applicant level, through recruitment, or through promotion, said Martine Gagne, chief technology officer for Meggitt. Organizations must rely on multiple resources to determine if they have made a difference, including examining executive kits to make sure role-playing models occupy it.