NATS signs up to Race at Work Charter

Over the course of 2021, colleagues from across NATS, including our employee networks and Trade Unions representatives, worked together to create our Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) vision, known as ‘under the same sky’. As an organisation, we are committed to celebrating the diversity of our colleagues, addressing inequality, to being inclusive and respectful, and to listen, learn and pay attention to the world. And while we have made recognisable progress in recent years, there is still lots to do in order to support all of our employees and attract our leaders of the future.

Just one step in this journey is signing up to Business in the Community’s (BITC) Race at Work Charter, which we hope will improve our approach to D&I at NATS, requiring a commitment to improve the equality of opportunity in our workplace by delivering against seven key actions.

We signed the charter last week and delivering against the seven objectives set by BITC will allow us to reflect on and be better informed on what we need to do to make the changes we want to see.

We are already taking action against most of these – I am the Executive sponsor for race and this March, we will be publishing our first ethnicity pay gap report. Over the past five years, we have replaced our anti-bullying policy with a Respect at Work policy and compulsory training, as well as adding unconscious bias and other D&I based training to our employee learning and development platform.

When it comes to recruitment and talent, we have completed an unconscious bias review of our trainee controller recruitment and most recently, partnered with Fantasy Wings, (a programme which inspires people from under-represented backgrounds to consider a future in the aviation industry), to ensure we can continue to attract the best and brightest people and provide a fulfilling and diverse place to work.

We are also working with BITC and one of our employee networks, globeAll, which represents ethnic and cultural minority employees, to develop our action plan, with clear accountabilities and timescales.

We recognise the importance of D&I and how crucial it is to not only get it right, but to keep listening, learning and adapting to the world around us.  By partnering with organisations and alliances like BITC, Fantasy Wings, Stonewall, HeForShe and others we will continue to make the positive changes needed, so we can continue to thrive and be the best we can be.

Read more about our Diversity & Inclusion vision and how we’re planning to achieve it.