Signing the Women in Aviation Charter: A year on…

This day a year ago, the UK’s aviation and aerospace sectors made a commitment to working together to build a more balanced and fair industry for women.

NATS was one of over 50 companies to sign the Women in Aviation and Aerospace Charter at the Farnborough International Airshow. A year on, the Charter has come a long way with more than 121 signatories and 34 supporting organisations now involved.

There is much more that we, and other organisations like us, must do to encourage and support women in pursuing STEM related careers. As Head of Learning, it’s really important to me that NATS is an inclusive environment for current and future employees, so I’m pleased to share what we have been doing over this past year…

Since last summer, the number of women in senior roles at NATS has grown by 2% and the number of women across our organisation has also grown. Not only does this hopefully make us more appealing to future applicants, but it has been part of an internal review to improve the ways we attract, support, develop and progress women in our organisation.

Future Minds session in 2018

We have recently launched a training programme to teach our employees about unconscious bias, based on experiences in our workplace. The programme is open to all employees. Sharing real-life examples means we can take away what we learn and apply it to our day-to-day lives.

To tie in with International Women in Engineering Day and International Women’s Day we’ve showcased some of the incredible females who work at NATS. By giving them a platform to promote what they do and how it impacts the business, other women have become more actively involved in our channels and wanting to find out more.

Our annual “Bring Your Daughter to Work Day” has rebranded as “Future Minds” to underline our commitment to being inclusive, reaching out beyond family members to inspire and attract the next generation of women employees.

We have also created an Inclusion Network which has grown to over 175 people, all interested in furthering the cause of diversity and inclusion at NATS. We’ve run four diversity and inclusion forums, bringing together 50 people each time to discuss topical issues and how we can improve.

Other groups, including a Women’s Network and Parenting Network, have been formed to give employees the opportunity to come together and share their experiences.

While all of this is positive, it is important that we continue to focus on the long-term changes required to encourage and support women in pursuing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) related careers.