Air Canada advanced the way it manages talent

When his U.K.- based loyalty solutions company offered Jonathan Lynch-Roche the opportunity to transfer from London, England, to Montreal, he never expected he would end up, seamlessly, working at Air Canada. Nor did he expect he would be helping to bring big changes to the airline’s approach to talent management.

In Montreal, Lynch-Roche was working for Aimia, the company that then owned Aeroplan, Air Canada’s loyalty program. In 2018, the Montreal-based airline made headlines by buying Aeroplan back. So what to do with all those employees?

“Thankfully, they offered me a position on their talent team,” says Lynch-Roche. “From the beginning, I felt very welcomed.”

It was not just Lynch-Roche. According to Arielle Meloul-Wechsler, Air Canada’s senior vice president people, culture & communications, the airline was able to bring across 100 per cent of front-line employees, such as call-centre workers, and a wide swathe of management people.

“We started with a mantra – we bought it, let’s not break it,” she says. “We knew that what we were really buying was a lot of knowledge. So, we didn’t just put people in a box based on what they were doing before. We were much more creative than that. We made homes for as much of that great talent we were acquiring as possible.”

It was an important exercise for Air Canada, because the airline recently announced an additional agreement to acquire Air Transat, Canada’s third-largest airline, pending regulatory approvals. “It’s all about how we integrate new members into the family,” says Meloul-Wechsler.

Lynch-Roche was part of the Aeroplan integration, which included the considerable onboarding, known as Arrivals Connection, that Air Canada organizes for new employees. “We had sessions where the senior leaders would visit and answer questions,” he says. “It was nice to see there was such senior buy-in. It made us feel they really cared, and this was something they had thought hard about.”

Air Canada also made some changes to its traditional culture for the newcomers, modernizing or relaxing some of its policies to be more in line with those of a smaller marketing company than those of a larger airline.

Now Lynch-Roche is heavily involved, as employee experience advisor, in a revamp of Air Canada’s talent management process. No longer will there be an emphasis on the traditional year-end performance review, with detailed rankings based on results.

“We are moving to quarterly conversations, with a change in focus,” he says. “Instead of rating the past, you are learning from the past and looking at how you can impact the future. What can you do differently, are there any opportunities to get involved with other projects, other client groups? Are there any new skills and competencies you need to get there?”

Employees are also encouraged to talk about their “stretch goals” – where they hope to end up within the organization, he says.

Adds Meloul-Wechsler: “It's meant to be much more of a holistic conversation about the individual's development and aspirations than a tick-the-box exercise of how you’re doing on this particular task.”

Ultimately, says Lynch-Roche, “if we want to become a top 10 global airline in everything we do, we need a workforce that is thinking this way, and is high-performing.”

Air Canada is soaring with the help of high-tech

When you think of Air Canada, you may imagine the airline's check-in counters, its massive aircraft hangars and, of course, the in-flight experience. You may not immediately think of a Silicon Valley-style tech environment, with collaborative spaces, sofas, foosball and lots of screens.

But in Saint-Laurent, where Air Canada is headquartered, you can increasingly see the influence of tech in its workspaces. That's because the airline is rapidly transforming many of its processes with the help of new technology - especially artificial intelligence, or AI. And that means the airline is hiring more tech people.

"We are a part of the of Scale AI consortium, which is made up of five superclusters of corporate and research partners based in Quebec that have grouped together to start pilot projects in artificial intelligence," says Arielle Meloul-Wechsler, senior vice-president for people, culture and communications. "And in our business, there are many areas where we see uses for AI and predictive thinking."

That includes cargo management, where AI can help forecast from past experience how much cargo may be coming, as well as revenue management, flight scheduling, fuel consumption and weather.

It will even have an impact on recruitment, says Meloul-Wechsler. The airline recently partnered with a company whose AI recognition software can be used with a video interview to guide a recruiter when a candidate's facial expressions or body language show they may be uncomfortable with a line of questioning.

"It can guide the recruiter to go deeper, and ultimately it produces better quality candidates," she says.

Among the new employees jumping into tech at Air Canada is Caroline Hilario Santos, a client partner analyst who joined in January 2018.

"We're making a whole transformation with AI," she says. "It's a really exciting time to be in IT here."

Santos studied actuarial mathematics and finance at Concordia University, followed by a master's in business intelligence at HEC Montréal. She worked for a startup in Toronto for a while, but found she missed Montréal. "I saw a perfect match at Air Canada," she says.

Now, she is helping set up a data environment that allows for complex analytics in real time in areas such as cargo and fuel. In her first year, she says, "I have been amazed at how warm everybody is, how dynamic the teams are. And everywhere you go, you hear people say 'Hello, Bonjour.' It makes me feel that everyone is part of a diverse, inclusive group that watches out for one another."

Air Canada spreads the word in Indigenous communities

The first thing you notice about Air Canada Flight Attendant Shannon Sunshine is that she lives up to her name. She is outgoing, friendly, positive - and very used to being asked about it. "People say, you must be very happy with a last name like that," she says. "And 99 per cent of the time I am."

But the name is also an important part of her identity. She is part of southern Saskatchewan's Fishing Lake First Nation, home to a mix of Cree and Saulteaux people. "In the Indigenous language it's a very long, long word," she says. So government registrars of past times went with its English meaning, Sunshine. "I'm very proud of my name."

And at Air Canada, she's proud that she has a lot of opportunity to help other Indigenous people consider a career with the airline. Sunshine herself grew up in Regina in a mainstream Canadian environment, but regularly visited her cousins on the Fishing Lake reserve. Then she moved to Calgary to attend Mt. Royal University, saw an ad for an airline customer service position, and once there became fascinated with aviation life. "I would see the flight attendants and think, I'd love to do that, I'd love to travel," she recalls.

She worked as a flight attendant for two airlines and then, two years ago, was thrilled to join Air Canada. "That was the top of my mountain," she says. "I had always dreamed of working for Air Canada, because they're the national carrier and a global company. I was absolutely thrilled."

Now she has actively participated in helping with Air Canada's recruitment efforts, becoming part of a new Indigenous Resource Group and making visits in her uniform to reserves across the country. She describes going to a reserve school in Quebec with an Indigenous colleague from Operations and facing a very quiet group of students. "But they began asking questions, and two hours later it was a very different classroom," she says. "It wasn't just about flight attendants, but about being future pilots, maintenance people, customer service agents - there was so much engagement and interest. It was just amazing for them to know there was a company committed to Indigenous recruitment and diversity, and to working within the community."

That commitment is genuine and comes from the top level, says Arielle Meloul-Wechsler, Senior Vice-President, People, Culture and Communications. "We want to reflect our global customer base," she says. "We have consciously been very creative in our approach to recruitment, and we have increasingly been going out into the communities, to change how we source talent and make sure we're looking beyond our own backyard."

She notes that Air Canada has diversity committees in all three of its key hubs of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, and has also been promoting cultural diversity in a section of the daily newsletter that goes to all employees, promoting events or explaining various cultural practices. "So our employees naturally become more open-minded," she says.

Air Canada has also been logging notable advances for women. The ratio of women pilots is now 6.5 per cent - "which sounds like a really low number, and we're not stopping there, but it's well above the North American average." And a range of key leadership positions are currently held by women, such as her own, the chief information officer, the head of inflight services, the corporate secretary, the chief commercial officer and the head of international operations.

The airline's support of the LGBTQ+ community has also been longstanding, and it is also working on new programs to enhance multi-generational mentorship before people retire.

To Sunshine, the airline's efforts on inclusion have had a very personal effect. "Air Canada really fosters a culture where we celebrate our diversity," she says. "This is the first time in my career where I feel comfortable and proud to be Indigenous and to share my cultural background with others.