Nurturing a more diverse workforce

Kristen Raby: We know that there are fewer females pursuing careers as pilots. For example, in 2022, women accounted for 11.9 per cent of pilots graduating with commercial pilot licenses, down from 16.1 per cent in 2020. I know there are amazing programs out there to engage, connect, and inspire students and future aviators at every stage in the pipeline, but when we see statistics like that with the investment and focus, it feels, in some ways, like we are going backwards.

Just over 5 per cent of aviation positions globally are held by females, and that’s in air traffic control, pilots, and licensed aircraft maintenance engineers. In Australia, that statistic is slightly better, 6.1 per cent, and so I guess we can say that we’re tracking ahead of the world in a certain way, but I don’t think that’s a statistic necessarily to be celebrated as showing great gender representation. So, a little bit better than the rest of the world, but it will take 100 years if we progress at this seemingly glacial rate to shift the needle if we want to actually see more gender representation in our pilots, engineers, and air traffic controllers.

AA: How can employers attract more diverse talent?

KR: I think it’s really fair to say, and there’s a bit of a catch cry, “you can’t be what you can’t see”. In creating a culture where people feel included and that’s reflected in leadership roles as well, it’s a lot easier for folks entering the sector to aspire to long-term careers. We did some great research, and supported some great research, in 2022 with the Barriers to the Pipeline report that we delivered through RMIT, Swinburne and Monash Universities, and in there, we identified that the most important in attracting females into the sector was the exposure to role models and mentors within our organisation. We focus on that very much.

It would be fair to say that across the sector right now, there’s a real war on talent. We actually want to make sure that students choose aviation, aerospace and space. And if you are an employer of choice, or a place where people see themselves represented and want to spend their careers, you win the war on talent.

The first step for employers is, how do you create a culture where people feel like they can belong? It’s a broad challenge across the sector to attract and retain talent. And I think when we look at being an employer of choice in a sector of choice, we have to reflect a culture that is attractive to diversity and inclusion, and that actually walks the talk of being fair and equitable in the way that we employ, promote and support individuals throughout their entire career.

AA: Jesse, why is diversity important at Leidos?

Jesse Young: We know that the aviation industry is desperately short on professional talent, both at sort of the entry level part of the sector, but also heading up towards those senior and executive levels. And maybe that’s a factor in some of that under-representation that you’ve mentioned in other organisations, but we know the world in the pilot side of things is going to need somewhere around a quarter of a million additional pilots over the next two years. That’s an extraordinary number, and in Australia, we know we’ll need tens of thousands more aviation professionals.

So, if aviation businesses in Australia and globally want to succeed, they’re going to have to do things to ensure that they have access to a great talent pool. That means making themselves attractive employers, and that means being a place where people can be themselves, being a place where diversity is respected and supported, but it also means ensuring that those people are then retained by helping them build pathways and giving them the sort of support that they need to pursue those sorts of careers.

AA: Leidos has had a goal of 20 per cent female representation. How’s that going?

JY: Well, I’m pleased to let you know that, in our flight crew roles, we have hit 20 per cent of our pilot employees being women, just in the last half of 2025. So that’s something we’re reasonably proud of. It’s a difficult number, though, to talk about, because it’s something that we look at as being a pretty positive change – when Leidos acquired this business in 2022, only 7 per cent of our pilots were women, so that put us probably slightly below the Australian figure for that time, but maybe a little above the global average. We’ve come a long way since 2022 to improve that – it’s a number we’re proud of when it comes to improvement, but it’s certainly not the end goal for us, where we’re looking to do better than that over the coming years.

AA: How was it achieved?

JY: We’ve had a leadership team that has been very committed to this being part of the goal. It’s something we decided early on we wanted to be an inherent part of our culture: that seeking to improve diversity, embracing diversity, and supporting diversity in our organisation were just part of who we are.

The first thing we looked at was a partnership with RMIT University. Their Aviation Academy has been doing some great things in this particular area, but one of the things that partnership enabled us to do was establish a scholarship program where we were able to look at and support people earlier in their career, because we know the earlier stages of the pipeline are where there is better diversity, right? There are more women in the early stages of their careers. So, if we wanted to improve our situation, that was a great place that we could start. At RMIT University’s Aviation Academy, around 35 per cent of their student pilots are women, which means that if we go in with a scholarship program, we’ll be able to find and support people we certainly intend to have join our organisation.

We’ve also been able to establish a few other things to support clear career pathways. We’ve established a nationally recognised certificate three, certificate four in airborne operations, and that’s a qualification that allows people in our organisation and people in aviation to not just have those sort of internal operator-specific or business-specific skills and qualifications, but actually have something that’s transferable, and we think that makes it possible to retain people in the industry and to also retain diversity in the industry, in order to make sure that we do continue to work towards those diversity goals.

AA: What about policies around parental and carers’ leave?

JY: We know that if you want to have diversity in an organisation, then you also need to be prepared to support people who have family responsibilities, caring responsibilities. Leidos is a certified family friendly workplace, but in terms of what that looks like in practice, we have a parental leave scheme that doesn’t have a qualifying period – to give you a specific case, we were able to hire a pilot and tailor a training program for that pilot while they were going through pregnancy, and that put us in a position where we could say, “Hey, we know that you want to be in our business. We want you to be in our business”. So, 20 per cent, certainly not the finish line for us, but making achieving a diversity goal something that’s inherent to your organisation’s culture, I think, is a really big part of how we make progress.

AA: How has Leidos improved its culture to support more diverse employees?

JY: There are many barriers that we’ve spoken about, but one of the things that has always stood out for me is that sort of degree of locker room talk that can develop in those male-dominated industries, and I’m sure there are plenty of people listening who would have seen that situation develop. We looked at that as something we wanted to tackle specifically, because we know it can be a really challenging thing that can drive diversity out of an organisation, or put us in a position where not everyone would want to stay.

One of the approaches we took was to take our Respect at Leidos training program and turn it into a face-to-face training campaign. Respect at Leidos is our program that seeks to address many things – ensuring a respectful workplace and addressing psychological safety. So rather than that just being something that’s online, we decided we needed to put our frontline leadership team in rooms, standing up in front of our frontline team – so our flight crew, our air crew and our engineers – and making it very clear what our expectations were, and what sort of culture we were trying to build. By making it something that the leadership team was out in our operating locations demonstrating their commitment to, we’ve been able to ensure that our workplace supports diversity and women specifically.

AA: Kristen, how valuable is the Leidos case study?

KR: I think everyone understands the importance of creating a safe culture for all employees, and when you can show or tell a story of something that has worked and actually has delivered a safe and respectful culture, the benefits to the organisation are those that Jesse has outlined. I think because things have changed over time, it’s often hard to imagine what a culture would look like if it were different to the one that you inherit, or the one that you walk into or the one that you walk past. So being able to reflect and demonstrate the benefits, and that they can actually help shift the needle and change the culture within an organisation, is really important.

It’s quite easy to harp on the things that don’t go well and things that could be improved – but when you have a shining example of something that’s gone well, when it comes to culture, the benefits of a healthy culture, of a safe and supported culture, that’s really a benefit to all employees. So, it not only increases attraction and retention – in the case of Leidos, obviously, you’ve moved the needle on female representation in your pilot workforce – but I would imagine that the folks that work within those safe and respectful cultures also feel a loyalty, and they feel safe to bring their full selves to work.