Why Human Sustainability is Vital for Aviaton!

The aviation industry is fueled by more than just kerosene and jet propulsion. It's powered by the dedication, ingenuity, and resilience of countless professionals who make it all work safely each and every day. With our industry seeking to double in size over the next 25 years, we must prioritize Human Sustainability.

The industry's rapid expansion presents a unique challenge. Pushing the boundaries of growth inevitably places strain on human resources, potentially leading to burnout, attrition, and a revolving door of talent. This short-term focus on growth, often prioritizing hiring over retention, is ultimately unsustainable. It's a recipe for a workforce that feels undervalued, unfulfilled, and ultimately, less effective. The issue runs deeper than just numbers. The hidden dynamics of corporate culture can create an environment where unspoken biases, favoritism, and cliques flourish, eroding trust and hindering genuine progress. While policies may be in place to prevent these pitfalls, they often fail to address the underlying systemic issues and fall short. This disconnect between policy and reality manifests in a variety of ways that negatively affects employees and the industry itself. New hiring processes can be overwrought with hubris and absurdities, having candidates jump through so many hoops they arrive at their new role somewhat bewildered. In essence, what is needed is a true human-centric approach from top to bottom. The pursuit of "human sustainability" often gets reduced to superficial gestures, like fancy yoga studios, gym memberships, and so on instead of addressing the core issues of psychological safety, genuine connection, a sense of belonging and creating true value for the employee. In fact, the concept of Human Sustainability is little understood, and the consequences of such disconnects are becoming increasingly evident. High rates of attrition, a silent wave of quiet desperation, and a growing sense of disillusionment are becoming evident in parts of the aviation workforce. The mental well-being of professionals, burdened by fatigue, disrupted sleep patterns, and the constant pressure to perform safely to the highest standards, is being compromised. Some find themselves so tired on their off days that they are simply not functional. Over time what results is a sense of having a lack of control ovr one's life. Staff find that they really are down, on their downtime. The anxieties caused by things like training loans, inflated housing and living costs, family and relationship pressures all compound work-related stress. This creates a perfect storm for burnout and a feeling of being trapped. To truly build a sustainable future, we must future-proof our workforce, ensuring that individuals are empowered, supported to thrive and better off for having come to our organizations. This means embracing a holistic approach that goes beyond superficial initiatives and tackles the systemic issues that undermine human capital. Creating an environment where employees feel safe to voice concerns, make mistakes, and learn from them is crucial. Providing opportunities to learn valuable skills and resources for the job, and building a strong atmosphere of belonging are also essential for employee engagement and retention.

What is this thing called Human Sustainability, what does it actually mean?

According to Deloitte, "Human sustainability: the degree to which the organization creates value for people as human beings, leaving them with greater health and well-being, stronger skills and greater employability, good jobs, opportunities for advancement, progress toward equity, increased belonging, and heightened connection to purpose."

When workers do well, the business does well. Discussions surrounding Sustainable Aviation must include the Human Dimension. The focus on Carbon Net Zero and all those sustainable initiatives are important, but for any industry to be truly sustainable it must include the component of Human Sustainability. Growing sustainably is a holistic endeavor. In order to future-proof the industry, we must future-proof our people, and provide them with the tools, and resources, and conditions that will allow them to be better off in the long run. We cannot continue to let our young professional men and women bear the burden of the ambitious growth plans and not provide them with the adequate tools, skills, and resources to get the job done and come out better on the other end.

For me, much of this can be understood from the perspective of Systems Dynamics, where the organization takes into account the myriad of moving pieces, each altering the other and changing the whole as it goes in ways that are not always easy to ascertain, but are happening and changing the flow of things in the whole. The aviation industry will be more sustainable as it deals with the structural and systemic issues that impede the creation of value for humans at the systems level. In other words, we must re-engineer and design our policies and procedures in such a way that they facilitate a net gain in value for the stakeholders and people that interact with the organization in any way. It is a philosophy that fosters win-win synergies in the human dimension. It encompasses the, when you do better, we all do better philosophy. The challenge for leaders in our industry is to recognize that this is an issue to be faced in the first place.

More must be done to mitigate the increasing work-related stress out there that contributes to mental health issues. There must be a clear and transparent strategy and communication about what the changes in technology and artificial intelligence mean for each of them, and help them stay ahead of that curve by reskilling them and helping them pivot within the organization in a way that creates value for both them and the organization at large. A seismic shift is coming, and it's coming fast. The Climate Change mandates are a big task in themselves, and now AI is creating both opportunities and challenges for everyone.

Why is Human Sustainability important for aviation?

Our frontline staff are facing increasing risks of physical safety and wellness in the workplace. Recent aircraft manufacturing issues have raised very real safety concerns among our professionals and customers, more crowded skies, and climate change factors have resulted in more frequent and severe turbulence, disruptive passengers are on the rise, and there are frequent reports in the media of violent attacks on staff. There is much anecdotal evidence that anxiety and depression are widespread. Here again, industry leaders need to be focused on how we can improve all these situations as the industry gathers even more pace. Rapid growth itself, can in some cases have an effect of diminishing returns when it comes to job satisfaction and anyone who has evolved with an airline through rapid growth will know, that you can quickly go from feeling like a key aspect of the business with a family type feel to being just a very small cog in a wheel of a big machine. It's like moving from a small town with a great community and moving into a big city where you become just another moving dot. I call this the Crocodile Dundee effect, where you go from being a big fish in a small pond to being a small fish in a big pond. Where there should be a sense of value creation, quite the opposite occurs. The "always on" and achievement economies as well as social media are significant contributors to mental health issues and on an individual level, we must take back control of our own thought processes and wean ourselves off algorithm-induced addictions and the corresponding stupor we find ourselves. Now the U.S. Surgeon General is so concerned about the negative impact of social media, that he making moves to have a warning sign about the harmful affects on the mental health of young people.

The concept of creating real value for your employees will reflect in a reduction in attrition for a start, and will get back to the fundamentals of ensuring your people are at their best. The levels of anxiety and depression in societies around the world are astonishing, and equally bemusing is the lack of recognition by organizations of the contributory factors that lead to these conditions within our very own industry. It's not good enough. There are signs of some progress, however, with the recent FAA initiatives and efforts to prioritize the mental health of pilots and to reduce the stigma associated with mental health issues. Much more needs to be done at the systems level and especially in an industry that expects to be twice its current size by 2050. We cannot automate our way out of this mess, the artificial intelligence tools and technological advances cannot substitute the human out of the equation altogether, but rather should augment and make the human dimension more efficient and effective and contribute to the creation of value in the workplace and beyond. Human Capital will always remain our greatest asset.

The essence of Human Sustainability is that you should be better off if and when you leave the company than when you joined. There should be a net gain, in terms of your quality of life, your skills, your employability, your career and life options and financially also. Yes, this is largely the individuals responsibility also, but it simply makes good business sense. Just as business thrive when they constantly create value for their customers, they also thrive when they create value for their employees. Deep meaningful value, and not just branding esthetics. This approach will help organizations to improve their performance on the social aspect of their ESG (Environment, Social, Governance.). Leadership is about service, and your employees are your internal customers when it comes to retention.

What can we do going forward?

The way forward requires a holistic approach around human issues, the industry needs to prioritize employee well-being through competitive salaries and robust mental health support, cultivate a diverse and inclusive workforce, invest in cutting-edge training programs, and promote sustainable practices that reduce environmental impact. This commitment to human sustainability will ensure that the industry's growth benefits both passengers and employees, fostering a thriving and equitable ecosystem for the long term.

Investing in people is a strategic necessity. It is entirely possible to create conditions and environments where individuals can thrive, we must empower them to create value, not just for the industry, but for themselves and their communities. We must continually invest in training and development, equipping our workforce with the skills needed to navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of aviation and to better themselves and their work in the process. Its not about hand holding, but rather a much more concerted effort with regard to the human dimension and uplifting the lives of those who make it possible. We must embed this into our organizational cultures. It should be ingrained in the mindset of our leadership teams at all times, prioritized as part of all our sustainability goals and strategic plans. Our efforts must be concrete, meaningful, and bring about effective outcomes for our workforces. It doesn't mean special and expensive gimmick days once a year, but rather what we do in our operations every single hour of every single day. If we don't recognize the need for this shift in the first place, it will be nearly impossible to measure any progress or design our metrics around it. Companies should invest more in this area and provide access to more resources to support the initiatives and efforts to prioritize the mental health of the workforce, crews, and personnel. They should also work to reduce the stigma associated with mental health issues.