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If the Aeroguard Group knows anything, it’s how to recruit and retain a diverse workforce. And they have the numbers to prove it.
As a provider of air passenger and baggage screening from Ontario west to BC and the Northwest Territories, Aeroguard employs 1,400 people and boasts an 80% retention rate. How do they do it?
“I believe that how people are managed directly relates to how happy they are as a workforce,” says Jane Greene, Aeroguard’s President and CEO. “And therefore what our retention rate is.”
Three employee recognition programs and an annual trip for two for personnel with perfect attendance records could account for some of that happiness, but retention at Aeroguard seems to have less to do with rewards systems and more to do with direct contact.
Greene travels to the company’s different sites and works the floor to fully understand her employees’ concerns and challenges. Plus working within the airline industry has allowed her to travel to the countries many of her employees are from. Admittedly, it’s one of the things she loves about the job.
 “I’m a firm believer in if you can understand other cultures and other ways of thinking, it broadens your own perspective,” Greene says. “It’s something I don’t even think about because it’s just the way we always do business. It’s just a part of who we are.”
That inside track may have given her company something of a competitive advantage, but it’s also mixed in with a whole lot of common sense. For example, it’s important, she explains, that “the mix of people that we hire, particularly screening officers, reflects the diversity of the traveling public.”
Take Vancouver, for instance. Forty percent of the Aeroguard workforce there is Filipino. Not surprising. Last year alone 11% of landed immigrants to BC were from the Philippines. And the rest is history.
“When you have a diverse workforce, it attracts more diversity to your workforce,” Greene says. “And I think what happened in our case is that members of certain ethnic communities join us and the word spreads.”
But that’s only half the battle. In the airport security business, requirements for the job, especially the pat-down, demand Aeroguard hire a mix of not only women and men, but also bilingual employees. And finding French-speaking individuals in Vancouver who can work shift work is “a big challenge.”
“It’s quite a challenging balance actually to try to make sure you have enough staff that are available to work on each shift, to maintain that balance,” Greene admits. “And I guess ultimately it is diversity.”
She denies, though, that there’s a specific hiring strategy in place outside of “nobody is ever excluded.”
Greene herself is living proof of diversity at work. She’s the only female CEO in Canada running airport security. And if she’s flying by the seat of her pants, there’s very little evidence of that. In fact, attracting and retaining a diverse workforce at Aeroguard seems to be more of a walk in the park.
“I think when you grow up in a very diverse environment, it’s what you know,” Greene says. “It’s all you know.” |
