How Flexa became Airbus’ third-largest traffic source through Employer Brand success

It’s absolutely critical. Our goal is to pioneer the future of aerospace, and you simply can't do that with a homogenous team. To solve the biggest challenges we face, like decarbonising aviation or designing the next generation of aircraft, you need people who think differently and come from all walks of life. The best ideas often come from the friction of different perspectives meeting.

This is the very heart of our diversity and inclusion strategy. My job in employer branding is to make sure our external image and our recruitment efforts reflect that internal commitment. We need to go out and actively find talent in communities that might not have considered aerospace before. At the end of the day, we’re a global company with customers all over the world. Our own team needs to reflect that reality.

Flexa has been a fantastic partner for showing people what we're really about when it comes to flexibility. Let's be honest, the aerospace industry can have a reputation for being a bit old-fashioned and rigid. Our biggest challenge is proving that this perception is outdated and that flexibility in the workplace is more than just hybrid working.

Having Flexa verify our working policies gives us real credibility. It’s not just Airbus saying we’re flexible; it’s an independent, trusted platform confirming it. Flexa also surveys a statistically significant portion of our employees to independently verify that what we say about working here is accurate. This means that the claims we make about our culture, flexibility, and employee experience aren’t just marketing messages, they’re backed up by real feedback from our people. That's a powerful signal to candidates. It also gives us a direct channel to connect with people, especially many talented women, who are specifically looking for a flexible employer. They find us on Flexa, see the verification, and it builds an immediate layer of trust that we might not have established otherwise.

Flexa has been Airbus' third or fourth largest source of traffic since we began our partnership, and has given us access to talent that we otherwise struggle to reach at the volumes we need. This credibility, combined with Flexa's talent demand data, has been pivotal in reaching new audiences and positioning Airbus as an employer of choice.

I was genuinely impressed by how thorough the verification process was. It wasn't just a checklist. They really dug into our policies to make sure we could back up our claims. It was a useful process for us internally too, as it made us take a close look at what we offer. Ultimately the flexibility criteria we selected was then shared with Airbus employees around the world who then calibrated the reality of our policies.

Working with the Flexa team has felt like a real partnership. They're experts who really get what we're trying to do. They've helped us tailor our message to reach different audiences, highlighting the things that matter most to them. It’s about being authentic and showing candidates proof that we’re committed to building an inclusive culture, and Flexa helps us do that effectively.

This is something we work on every single day. For us, it starts with our leaders, so we're rolling out inclusive leadership training across the board to help managers build and support diverse teams. It’s also important to not forget about the basics so female tailoring for workwear is critical along with ergonomic adaptation for tooling, this ensures a safe working environment for everyone.

Our employee-led resource groups are also a huge part of our culture. We have groups like Balance for Business for gender balance, Pride@Airbus for our LGBTQ+ colleagues, and many others. They create community and have a real voice in shaping company policy. We also believe in being transparent. To do this we set public goals for things like the number of women in leadership and hold ourselves accountable for hitting them, we also publish our gender pay gap report each year. It’s a constant process of listening, learning, and improving.

For me, it boils down to a few key things. First, there's the purpose. People who work here get to contribute to projects that truly change the world. You could be working on sustainable aviation fuel or a satellite that helps us monitor climate change. That's a powerful reason to come to work each morning.

On top of that, the global scale of Airbus is just immense. You have the chance to work with brilliant people from all over the world and can build a career that takes you to different countries and different parts of the business.Personally I’ve have had the great pleasure to work across engineering, customer services, commercial marketing and HR in the near 20 years I’ve spent at Airbus.

And finally, and this is crucial, there's a real focus on people. We're an engineering company at heart, and we have a long-term view on everything, including our employees' careers and wellbeing. It's that mix of incredible, world-changing projects and a genuinely supportive, human culture that I think is unique to Airbus.

That's a tough one because the whole EVP is something my team and I are passionate about. But if I had to choose, two things really stand out to me personally.

The first is this idea of "redefining what’s possible" . It's not just a slogan. It’s the promise that you can come here and work on things that no one has ever done before. It speaks to the innovator in all of us, and I’m incredibly proud that we offer people the chance to build a real legacy.

The other part that I'm just as proud of is our focus on "We Are One." This is our commitment to being a single, collaborative, and inclusive team. It means that no matter how big and global we are, we succeed together. It's the combination of those two things: the chance to do incredible work, and the feeling that you're part of a team that has your back. For me, that’s what makes Airbus special.