Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Okay, you guys, Jane Hoskissen from IATA is here. We have a very, very interesting conversation we're about to have about the airline industry. I've been looking forward to this call for many weeks. And many of you may not know this, but the airline industry is one of the fastest growing, most interesting industries on the planet. It's much bigger than you realize. So, Jane, and we also have Alina Ehrenberga with us as well. And I'll let Alina introduce herself for a minute. But, Jane, could you introd yourself and tell everybody about IATA and what you do there?
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Josh, thanks so much for inviting us on the podcast. So IATA is the International Air Transport association, and we're a trade body that represents around 350 airlines. And if you think about all of the most popular airlines that you're likely to fly, we represent them. And that's about 80% of all air traffic in the world. So we represent those airlines. We do a lot of advocacy.
And my role in the organization is the director of talent, Learning, Engagement and diversity. And the diversity part of the role has given me an opportunity to work with partners like Alina from Airbaltic looking at how we can make the industry really attractive. And so her and I have been partnering on a big piece of work for the industry over the last couple of months.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Okay, well, we're going to talk about that in a minute, but first, why don't you tell us about the airline industry for a few minutes? How big is it? What are the big drivers?
Yeah, Josh, what do we need to know?
[00:01:37] Speaker B: It's an industry where most people think they get on a plane and they're likely to see somebody in the flight deck flying the plane, and then cabin crew in the cabin serving them a meal. And they don't think of all of the other roles that sit behind it. And they are two really important roles. But the industry itself is much, much bigger. And you said it's one of the fastest growing industries. That is Indeed true.
By 2043, it's projected that aviation support about 135 million jobs around the world, which translates into about 8.5 trillion of economic activity. And that's nearly double where it is today. And maybe another thing that you might think about is, oh, airlines, you know, they're kind of a profitable industry. Actually, we one of the smallest net profit margin industries.
We tend to operate about 3.7% net profit margin. So that's kind of often the price of a cup of coffee on your flight. And we support many different Roles. So I said most people think pilots and cabin crew, but actually there's a whole, the whole industry behind it around ground handling. We have people that work on pricing, on ticketing, on customer service, on check in, on route planning, which is a really interesting. And then we have all of the auxiliary services. So ground services, ground operations, safety in the sky. So air traffic control controllers that make sure that planes do not get too close to one another. So a really, really big industry and that doesn't include support staff like me in hr. We have hr, legal, finance, all of those things. So for us, it's such an interesting and complicated industry because an overlay around it all safety and regulation. And of course that brings its own challenges.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Yes. And you know, we just, I think, you know, I was just in the Middle east and I went to Emirates and Etihad and met, met both of them face to face. There' the manufacturers of jet engines, of planes, the airports, the roads that get to the airports. I mean, there's a huge amount of the global economy and then there's space travel, which is impacting this. We're going to talk about it in a minute. Yeah, so it's absolutely fascinating.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: And Josh, you just said you've been in the Middle East. Well, the Dubai Air show is on this week and you know, the order of magnitude of orders that just Airbus got, I think there was 240 orders for aircraft from Airbus just in the last couple of days. Well, that's huge that these machines are not built in a day. They take years and years of planning. And as you said, that's a whole supporting industry. So really fascinating.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: Okay, well this is good. So, so everybody listening to this podcast is aware of this and participates in this industry in some fashion because we, we either fly on a plane or we're involved in it. So tell, tell us about what you're doing with Alina in terms of your talent model and then of course we'll talk about Galileo too. But let's, let's hear what you guys have been up to.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: Yeah, great. So actually maybe Alina, give a little bit of context. Alina and I first met one another because Airbaltic was a winner of a diversity and inclusion award that we give for the work that they've done on diversity and inclusion. And that's a really important piece of the industry as you might imagine, because we need to get a diverse workforce. And one thing that brought us together was a cross industry.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Can I stop you for one sec?
[00:05:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Comment. When I was at Emirates, the way they framed diversity to me was we need to speak 20 languages on each plane.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Which, so this isn't diversity to be nice or fair. This is operational mandate.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. I always say we need to be as diverse as the world we serve, and we serve the whole world. And it's a really important point is languages are really important. Cultural perspectives are really important. So, you know, I know Josh, you've talked a lot in recent podcasts around, you know, some of the kind of pushback in certain parts of the world around diversity and inclusion. And I think that that that's far too narrow a focus because the industry itself has to be totally diverse.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: Absolutely. So tell us about your guys talent work. I want to hear the framework you guys have been working on.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Yeah. So we came together on a piece of work for the Global Aviation and Aerospace Skills Task Force. And that was a really kind of multi industry, multi sector group of people that said, you know, if the industry is going to double, how on earth do we attract people, how do we develop people and how do we retain people and how do we really know what the skills are that we're going to need for the future? And that's where Alina and I were working. We were working on a forward look of the industry and the types of skills that we would need because talent shortages are a real thing in parts of the industry.
The technology changes quite quickly and we have a lot of regulatory pressure. So we have to think about all of those things. You just talked about being in the Middle east, it's one of the big growth areas and they certainly have to think geopolitically because they don't have the natural talent base in their own countries to be able to fulfill the future demand. So it's a really, really big piece of work to take a future look at the industry and the skills that we would need. And maybe I can hand over to Alina and she can give her perspective of how she got aligned with this work through an airline.
[00:07:10] Speaker C: Definitely. Thank you, Jane, for the introduction and engaging me in the beginning gast work where we collided with Susan from Canada together working on the future of work in the perspective of 2050. And I think the aspect that you elaborated on the diversity, I think from an airline perspective, it was for the last almost 15 years. Diversity is actually also the pathway to combat the scrunch of the talent. And as we talk about geopolitical and demographic situations. So for instance, as an airline located in the Baltic state and in Latvia, we have only 2 million people and we Are in this half of the growth doubling the size of the organization in upcoming years with the fleet extension. Of course diversity is actually the business need to expand the market and attraction of the talent. And there actually this future of work perspective and a yako job and work on all the people agenda of the 25 by 2025 activ.
And also alignment across the borders of aviation industry to have a common understanding of the people process and the challenges that we all are facing. I think that was the great perspective that we are working. We put a lot of efforts to understand what are the trends, what we are facing in the industry. Not only airlines but also all the supporting this. Jane very well described the small cities within each airport and all the jobs related how those will evolve. Take into account the AI, the new technology coming in and how we can support our employees and how actually also the states the governmental level can support organizations with additional education opportunities. How we can rescue our population students, all the generations get them involved into the airlines because those are bringing a lot of economical value for for the States the connectivity and all the benefits for for the travelers.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: And it's true when I was in, when I was in the uae, many of the executives said in some ways the airline and the airport is the economic driver of the whole country. So it is a big issue. So Jane, let me go back to you and let's talk about your talent market, your talent model rather and talk to us about your talent model, attraction, development, retention and so forth. And then how you've built this model, what you're doing with it and what you're doing with Galileo.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: Yeah, in fact, maybe I'll start with Galileo, Josh.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: Because Galileo, of course I'd like to start there, but I didn't want to turn it into an advertisement.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: It's fine. You know, I am a real evangelist for Galileo. I think for every HR professional it's such a game changer. And I think when we were in Paris, I said that to you that you know, it really cuts down the amount of kind of heavy lifting that we traditionally had to do as HR people. So what we did is we tried to say what's the problem that we're trying to solve? And what, what we're trying to solve and understand is what is the future need for aviation professionals across the whole of the aviation value chain. And so to do that, basically I first started by asking Galileo what it understood of the aviation kind of roles in the industry. And then I started to feed it information. So I fed it some information from IATA around the types of roles that we would see. Then we started to include things like the Boeing and Airbus future vision. So because Boeing and Airbus, it takes a long time to build a plane, they do a lot of work on looking at what are we going to need for the future if we're going to build these many aircraft, how many pilots are we likely to need? What are the skills that we need? And so ultimately, I started, I really did start playing and experimenting with Galileo and said, you know, different prompts like, tell me the kind of roles, tell me the kind of skills that you need for this role. And it really was so comprehensive. It built for me a skills framework, essentially, and it broke down for every part of the industry the types of technical skills that we would need and the kind of soft skills that we need. And then, of course, I, you know, I was super excited with this and then said, okay, tell me more, tell me more about how those roles will change because of AI. And that's where I think Galileo just really took it to the next level. Because for every skill, it was able to say, this is how we think AI will augment it in the future and how it will impact these roles. Is that going to happen in the short term, the medium term and the long term, and what the kind of impact for those skills were? And I think that that was then when I started to feel, oh, my goodness, this is a document that is really going to provide the most holistic view of the industry that we've seen before, because Boeing and Airbus, they'll write about what we need for pilots. But this was really taking a very holistic view. And that was super exciting. And I think, you know, Alina knows, then I really got carried away and started saying, well, okay, break that down by region and give me a regional perspective so that, that we could start to think, okay, well, how is that going to change the industry? How is it going to change the roles that we need? And how will that then impact how we attract, develop and retain people through the life cycle? Does that make sense?
[00:12:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I saw it, at least in the early version of your model, and it just blew my mind how comprehensive it was. For example, one of the things I noticed, just to point this out to the people listening, the US market seemed to be constrained on space skills and aeronautics. Did I read that correctly?
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Yes, yeah. Yeah, you really did. So one thing I was looking at is do they have the right level of skills when we start looking at the much wider industry piece and the wider value chain? And of Course, that to me says, okay, that's an opportunity to build capability. Right. So it helps you identify where you really need to build that development capability.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: So explain to me how this works. So you guys build this big model, and there's what, 300 or 400 airlines around the world? There's a lot more than I realized.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: I mean, do you. Do you give this model to them and then they have to figure out what they need to do in their geographies? How does this get used?
[00:13:32] Speaker B: Yeah, we shared it with within the Global Aviation and Aerospace Skills Task Force, which was representing a number of different interested parties.
That's where we've shared the models so far. And so that model is available kind of as a piece of a repository artifact in the GAST library that. That people can use. And then from our perspective, we've shared that we've been working on this with our airlines. So we have about 200 airlines that we interact with on a quarterly basis. From my perspective, Josh, and you know, my thoughts on this, this is a real game changer in that it's a piece of information that airlines can take a look at and say, okay, well, how does this help me build my talent plans now that I see the kind of skills that we'll need for the future?
[00:14:19] Speaker A: So each airline would have somebody sort of with a role a little bit like yours, and they could use this model as a starting point, and then they could localize it to the programs and initiatives and investments they want to make to meet the needs in their area. Is that correct? And then do you think we could build a big shared model where people contribute to the model globally? That was one of the things that was going through my head.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: I mean, I think that would be incredible. And I think, you know, Alina's a good example where she could take a look at that model and say, well, how does that scale up, up or down for the environment, for airbaltic, for example, when. And then you could imagine that the other airlines would be able to scale it. So you talked about Emirates and some of the Middle Eastern carriers. They've got a different order of magnitude of the scalability challenges that they've got to smaller, more regional airlines. But, Alina, I don't know what your thoughts are on that.
[00:15:10] Speaker C: Definitely agree, because this framework, it actually gives a lot of thoughts for any airline representative.
And I think why it's also so insightful. And as Josh, you mentioned that that was like blowing our mind as well on. On the GAST Group, because airlines are so specific because for years it was built relying on the skills and relying on. On people following the proper standards, trained very well. Because we are talking here about the safety, right. So the safety of the travel. So we with that in mind, airlines and aviation industry as such is very focused on the skills and on the standards and to get the most efficient and effective way how get people trained, enable them to provide all the ability to provide the best service, the most safe and according to all the standards. And I think that is such a powerful tool to look from the perspective and just plugging in, okay, we don't know what would happen potentially in all the technology technologies in like year ahead. Right. So we cannot predict it in all the data details. But you can think from the future perspective what kind of skills you can already now develop internally, not as a maybe T shape and focusing on one core skill within the role, you can think already as a P shape or even M shape. I think that you also shared in one of your reports that that is the way forward to be more agile in a sense and faster adopting technologies, adaptive work structures, helping people to reskill and, and move internally. So for the internal mobility as well, I think it's wonderful.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: So you. So people in the industry and in peripheral parts of the industry can, can get this model from you. Is that how this works?
[00:16:56] Speaker B: They should be able to get it from. There's a global aviation and aerospace skills task force site, the gast and they can go there and it will be listed on there and they can find it, but anyone can reach out to.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: Okay, so we'll put a link. Well, so people. Because I think a lot of people who aren't in the airline industry are going to want to look at this and understand how it works. Because when I read it blew my mind. Just as a framework on how to build a skills plan in any industry, to be honest, it was just, it's just amazingly comprehensive. So let me, let me just ask one more question here about the way you guys are doing this. You've got attraction, development, retention, and then all the related issues around those issues. And they're all very local to each geography and each. In each airline. And then at the bottom you mentioned these key themes. Let me give you guys a couple minutes to just run through the themes that you really think are important in this whole process. And, and when we publish the podcast, we'll give people more information on how to get a model and take a look at it and how to use it with Galileo and all that stuff.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: Fabulous. So I think I mean, you're seeing it, Josh, certainly with the other people that you talk to is that move from the kind of what I would say is old fashioned kind of jobs to skills. And I think that skills being a really common language is very important. And skills are fairly universal across the industry. Which is, which is important because we talked before about, about being as diverse as the world we represent. And that means there is a degree of mobility in airline people that you may not see in other industries. So, you know, if you're cabin crew and you have language ability and you know how to care for the customer and you can provide safety support, because we often forget cabin crew are there for our safety. We hear it, we hear it when they're giving our instructions, but they, they're really important set of skills. I think skills as a common language allows us really to kind of laser focus on what we need to do. And that is common across the airlines. The bit that I think we do very well, and again, this is why Alina is on the call with us, is because we can compete as airlines on routes and prices and service levels. But actually when we talk about people and safety, we perform best when we share. And so it's an industry where collaboration is really important. So my safety colleagues, they're brilliant at sharing lessons learned about safety and we try to do the same about people because people are a scarce resource and we all love flying, right? And we. I'm still super excited when a plane goes down a Runway and we take off. It's still, I still feel the thrill like a small child. But it's not necessarily the most attractive industry for people coming into. Some people don't think about it as being an attractive industry, which is why I think we need to collaborate and how that's important to, to get ourselves kind of future ready because as Leena alluded to, we don't know exactly how things will change, but it's not, it's not the fastest moving industry in the world in that sense. So we do have a level of security.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: You know, one more question about the industry that fascinates me. I have opinions as to who I believe the leaders are, but do you guys look to certain airlines as thought leaders and human capital leaders? Do you, do you help them? Do you evaluate them?
What is the maturity of this human capital part of the airline industry across all these different companies?
[00:20:23] Speaker B: That's such a great question, Josh. We haven't done a full end to end HR maturity assessment, but one of the projects that I launched and brought Alina and I into kind of working together is an initiative called 25 by 2025, which was to get better gender diversity. And we did do maturity assessments across the diversity elements for people. So we were looking at their kind of frameworks. And you're right, there are some airlines that are absolutely. They're already miles ahead of other airlines when it comes to a lot of their HR governance processes, a lot of their strategic decisions around people and diversity. It's not just about diversity. It's around what's your human capital strategy. And so during the period of about 2020, 23, 2024, we engaged in about 70 airlines, did a maturity assessment looking at their diversity policies and their overall kind of strategies. And I think we can see some emerging leaders in this space. I mean, you probably from your own experience as a flyer.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Okay, I want to share that. Let's talk about that offline. I want to see what your model came up with.
Okay. All right, you guys, I don't want to go too much longer because I know people are busy when they listen to these podcasts. Let me conclude, piece of information. You're coming to our conference next year, correct? Okay. So next June. I know it's a little bit ways away. We'll have some other things in the interim. We're going to have Jane and maybe Alina, if she wants to come, come to our conference in June in LA called Irresistible. We're also going to have airline executives from Etihad and airline executives from Emirates. We've had Delta there in the past as a leader. We gave Delta a big award a couple years ago. So we're going to talk a lot about this. And it's not only because we all fly on planes and we care, but this is a massive industry, 135 million people just in the industry itself, and then the peripheral industries, which we talked about, construction, manufacturing, engineering, airplane manufacturing and so forth. Very, very big. And I think your model is such a fascinating implementation of Galileo, of course, and opportunity for people to understand the human capital issues in this industry. Because the thing that's cool about it is it, its safety, its service, its engineering, its operations, its financial services. It's it. It's all of the disciplines of any company, plus more in one industry. So it's really, really comprehensive what you guys have done. Thank you, Jane and Alina, for joining me today. We'll do some more on this. And I just really want to thank you for your support of what we've been doing with Galileo and for working so closely with us, no thanks to you.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: Without Galileo, there's no way we would have been able to do the work. So I have to say, it really is teamwork with Galileo.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: Wonderful. Okay, you guys, thank you.
[00:23:17] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: We'll see you in la. Probably before then.
