Learning and Development

The importance of learning within British Airways is demonstrated through one of the components of its business aims to ensure the personal development of employees, so that continued business success can be achieved.

‘Our aim is to become a world-class learning organisation’ says Kim Reid, Head of Leadership & Talent. ‘ Achieving this has the dual benefit of enabling our colleagues to fulfil their potential while allowing us as an organization to build on our successes going forward’

We are committed to achieving a High Performance Leadership culture that engages colleagues at all levels and promote world-class levels of productivity. Our focus has been on strengthening leadership behaviours and developing leaders for the future. Programmes are now in place to create a pipeline of talent from within the organisation at all levels.

British Airways runs a number of development programmes for its employees.Each is tailored to the requirements of the individual, in terms of their position and career aspirations. Front Line Leaders and Outstanding Leaders are two such programmes. They are aimed at empowering those leading teams in customer facing roles to make decisions, develop leadership capabilities and provide support to their colleagues. Both programmes exemplify the blended learning approach that is embedded across the business, using traditional classroom-based workshops, coaching and accessing an online learning portal holding video based scenarios, exercises and further tools to support the learning.

The programmes offer a broad range of experiences across the airline or within one more specialist function, but all with a strong customer focus and the objective of developing and nurturing talent for the future. Our graduates undertake real roles and responsibilities from the very beginning, bringing new ideas and approaches whilst learning key skills, capabilities and experience from the colleagues around them. The programmes offer additional development through external leadership and personal development, professional qualifications and opportunities to go ‘beyond the day job’. We also encourage them to be involved with various community initiatives, such as charity fundraising and supporting local projects.

Our apprenticeship programmes play a key role in allowing us to bring new, emerging talent into our organisation. We currently have over 300 apprentices undertaking schemes in Engineering, Heathrow Operations, Cargo, IT, Head Office and Project Management for the first time. On all our schemes, the apprentices will complete a structured programme, designed with their development in mind, which gives them the opportunity to undertake ‘real’, relevant work while undertaking nationally recognised qualifications. They also have the opportunity to become involved in other activities, such as ‘community days’. The aim of our apprenticeship schemes is to ensure our apprentices develop the skills, and gain the experience, necessary to successfully continue their careers.