AIN’s Corporate Aviation Leadership Summit (CALS) West brought together business aviation leaders to examine and discuss some of the most pressing issues facing the industries. Topics addressed during the event in Scottsdale, Arizona, included insurance & risk, managing generational differences, hiring & compensation, legal matters, skills retention, safety, training and FBO surcharges.

Here are the main conclusions from the roundtable discussion on retaining employees, which was led by Bob Hobbi from Service Elements.

The discussion points were based on five topics: safety culture, monetary expense, morale, organizational health and leadership.

Why do we need to focus on Retention?

• Everyone agrees that retention is an important point and that all leaders should be mindful of its impact and ramifications.
• More specifically, retention has a hard dollar and soft dollar expense. Hard dollars, could be, at times, recruiting costs, training costs and onboarding costs. Soft dollars could be the issue of being shorthanded and having to put pressure on the rest of our teams to cover for the missing team member. Morale can suffer, which always has a cost.
• Disruptions to the day-to-day flow of work. Projects may have to be put on hold and even worse, may have difficulty covering trips and aircraft customer trips.
• If turnover or retention is an ongoing issue, this can impact a flight operation’s reputation in the industry as “may be a tough place to work”
• From a leadership perspective, it can plant seeds of doubt in the minds of the users and passengers about the people in charge of the flight operations. Our reporting executives may start questioning the reason for us not being able to retain talent. Or even worse yet, “do we have competent leadership team at our flight operations.”

What are the reasons we may lose people?

• It is often said that most attrition in an organization is the result of a toxic culture. Is it a good place to work at? Do we enjoy our work?
• A multitude of surveys suggest that one key reason for people deciding to change jobs is their manager or leaders. Everyone’s relationship with their manager is an important part of the equation for staying or leaving a job.
• Higher pay can be an enticement to leave, but not always. Everyone has examples of people leaving not necessarily for higher pay.
• A lot of discussions, focused on unresolved conflicts, inside the flight operations, being another reason for people deciding to change jobs.
• Not following established department standards or guidelines is another topic for people deciding to leave a team or a group or and organization.
• Personal, family issues.
• Sometimes, erroneous perceptions about the future of the organization. Is the future secure?
• Lack of upward mobility. Flight operations are typically a small group and the opportunities for promotions are limited.
• With regard to leadership, sometimes favoritism or perceived favoritism, can also cause disenchantment and people deciding to leave an organization.
• Another possible reason for departures can be lack of direction, vision and mission for the flight department.
• Lack of same page-ness. Various people in the flight operations team have different interpretations of rules and standards.
• Quality of life or perceived quality of life issues at work. Not getting enough family time because of too much work activities.

What can we do to help slow down or prevent unwanted turnover? Leadership:

• Leadership should make retention a high priority and an ongoing concern.
• Leaders should frequently “pulse check” with their people.
• We should all recognize the impact of “human factors” in the overall organization, sometimes referred to as organizational resource management.
• Address conflicts inside the flight operations team.
• Pay special attention to the age-old divide with flight crews and the maintenance team.
• Conduct regular town halls. informing the team about company, enterprise or senior leadership and C-suite activities as possible.
• Be available for our respective teams. Need to have our ears to the ground.
• Address gossip and rumors.
• Pay special attention to silos operating in a vacuum. Encourage or even organize interdepartmental mingling, sometimes even shadowing team members from other departments.
• As a leader, should ask for feedback from the team on “how am I doing”.
• Be transparent with difficult and challenging questions for your team. It’s OK to vulnerable. It makes leaders more real and grounded.
• Solicit ideas and solutions.
• Celebrate successes and accomplishment. And find reasons to do it frequently.
• Leaders must build an environment of trust through responsibility and vulnerability/self- accountability. For example, saying “Here’s what I could have done better and how it will be better in the future.”

What can be done to further enhance to teamwork and engagement?

• Forming committees to address various initiatives, temporary or otherwise. Topics could include: customer service, organizational health, vision or mission, SMS, and ISBAO. Committees should have direction and agenda.
• Include people from other departments in every team or committee. Diversity of job functions can be very helpful to foster a higher level of teamwork as well as solid solutions to department challenges.
• Everyone hates meetings. But organized, purposeful and targeted meetings can be very helpful. Always have specific agendas and avoid “scope creep” of meeting purpose.
• Address and discuss Generational differences were brought up. Which can then cause issues for teamwork and for colleagues to be on the same page. For example: some people believe you work until the job is done long past prescribed duty days, while others believe leaving things to be finished at a later time is important to rest, mental health, and work life balance.
• Have team-building activities. The old and occasional bowling night or holiday events are always useful. Small cost is associated with the team building activities. Have them frequently and with a variety of events.
• People enjoy being appreciated, publicly and officially. Come with ideas to publicly thank and celebrate people who step up and go the extra mile.
• Invest in professional or core skills training and workshops. These can have multi-purpose outcomes; team-building and skill development.
• SMS covers ethical conduct but leadership must make sure this is lived in the culture
• When hiring many mentioned that it is important stress why the department exists, what is at stake, and what ethical behavior is expected, including humility, accountability, “extreme ownership.”
• Leadership makes a difference, especially in challenging times, e.g. when things go wrong. An example was given of a crew debriefing that took place following an incident. One pilot admitted an error s/he committed in flight preparation. The other pilot blamed other people, other departments, other factors, never taking personal responsibility.