Gender
In 2020 we set a target to increase female representation in our senior roles to 40% by 2025. We’re making good progress and in 2022, 38% of women held a senior role across the airline. Our focus going forward is to continue to invest in our talent pipelines – specifically at entry and mid-senior levels – and to improve this figure further.
To drive our Inclusion and Diversity commitments, we began transforming how we support colleagues through our policies, leading with the introduction of gender-neutral enhanced family leave arrangements. This included supporting the primary parent with a phased return to work, by working four days a week and receiving Full Time Equivalent pay.
This is having a positive impact on the number of women that return from primary parent leave, reducing our attrition of women and improving our talent pipeline into senior roles.
38%
Females in our senior roles
9.6%
Ethnic diversity representation at senior management level
A big focus in 2022 was embedding more inclusive practices in our recruitment processes by:
- Practising open recruitment by increasing transparency
- Using gender-diverse recruitment panels and proactively monitoring the outcomes of shortlists
- Reintroducing Textio – an anti-bias job advert tool – to highlight and eliminate biased language
- Investing in a new recruitment tool Top Score for our emerging talent programmes, which supports a range of accessibility needs
- Updating our uniform guidelines to offer more flexibility for colleagues from every gender, sexual identity, ethnicity and culture
Ethnicity
In 2022 we announced new targets to make progress on our ethnic diversity representation amongst management and senior roles across the airline. We know that increasing diversity will benefit our business, our colleagues and our customers. It will help us on our journey to become a truly inclusive organisation – one that reflects the global communities that we serve and enables an open and welcoming culture for all our colleagues to thrive.
Across the airline, our ethnic diversity representation compares well with the UK average, but as we look specifically at the higher management levels, our ethnic diversity is lower. That’s why we identified this as a priority area for action.
By 2025, our target is for at least 12% of our leaders to be from ethnically diverse backgrounds, rising to 14% by 2030.
We continually monitor progress against our targets for ethnically diverse representation at senior management levels. At the end of 2022 our representation stood at 9.6%.
In 2022 all of our Management Committee participated in a reverse mentoring programme with colleagues from ethnically diverse backgrounds. Outcomes of the scheme included enhancing our cultural awareness and reviewing our recruitment processes. This programme has since grown to include all our senior managers. We’re committed to continuing to drive change through raising awareness of the barriers that exist for colleagues from ethnic minority backgrounds.
9.6%
Ethnically diverse representation at senior management level.
Speedbird-Z
Through Speedbird-Z, our student engagement platform, we’ve supported the employment prospects of 10,000 students by providing information and insight into careers at British Airways. We’ve also continued to partner with organisations such as Fantasy Wings, Air League and a number of schools and universities to strengthen our diversity pipeline and promote opportunities to those in underrepresented groups.
Yearly Statistics
Females in senior roles
Measurement: %
Ethnic minorities in senior roles
Measurement: %