British Airways: 5 years nurturing future talent

To protect their position as one of the global aviation market leaders, British Airways are constantly striving to innovate both to ensure they continue to engage & hire the best talent from the most diverse talent pools but also provide a market leading experience for all young people coming into contact with their brand.

For this to be delivered at scale, British Airways partnered with Connectr Talent Technology in 2019 to create Speedbird-Z. An innovative virtual candidate experience that has seen apprentice hires 6x more likely to be offered a role after engagement on the platform, and graduate hires 3x more likely to be offered.

Speedbird-Z does much more than convert early talent into successful applicants. The platform carries across the British Airways brand, preserving their reputation as a high-quality airline importantly, also supporting candidates who were unsuccessful. The platform nurtures brand loyalty from candidates who are also consumers, and has become an active community in it’s own right.

Implementation

• Bespoke candidate engagement platform, branded to British Airways; 'Speedbird-Z'
• Digital, engaging and digestible learning content modules, aligned to British Airways’ brand history and values, plus insights into available career routes within the businesses.
• Additional ‘plug and play’ modules provided by Connectr delivering application support and soft skill development.
• Always-on access to 20 British Airways ‘buddies’, trained by Connectr, providing light-touch mentoring to support and inspire future talent.
• Live, in-platform data reporting to track user engagement rates and behavioural trends.

I gave this rating because I didn't know anything about British Airways but the platform educated me fully, to understand their mission, values and their current standard in what they want to achieve as a company. And the site made me fall in love with them without even being part of it yet.

Platform user 2023

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Changing mindsets, from expensive to inclusive

In Spring 2024, we conducted a survey with a group of over 700 young people, split into those who had engaged with British Airways as a potential employer but not used Speedbird-Z versus those who had actively engaged on the Speedbird-Z platform either consuming learning content, messaging Mentors or both.

We asked both groups to describe British Airways in 3 words - themes from the group who did not use Speedbird-Z strongly associated British Airways with prestige, luxury and elegance. Whilst not inherently bad things, this image of British Airways is somewhat outdated and not representative of what it’s like to work there. It also gives British Airways an ‘expensive’ consumer image for those candidates who may also be customers.

The group who used Speedbird-Z answered this question with a significantly different perspective of British Airways, with words like ‘Diverse’, ‘Innovative’ and ‘Sustainable’ reaching the top.

This indicates that through the curated candidate experience available on Speedbird-Z, British Airways have been able to change mindsets and perceptions of their employer brand in a way that makes them much more appealing to a wider audience, and aligns far more closely with the expectations of Gen-Z to see employers be authentically inclusive and sustainable.