Gladys B.

Started in the legal field to public policy and energy transition.

One of the most important careers moves I made was completing the LPC which opened me to more opportunities in the legal field and BA. This exposed to be an in-house legal department working matrix and a new business sector, aviation in an international airline with multifaced areas. Consequently, I discovered my career area of interest was in fact public policy which led to my second important career move completing an MA in Public Policy at King’s College London while studying fulltime at BA. During this MA, I further narrowed down my interest to energy transition in aviation which has led to my third important career move a PhD in this area. The PhD is motivated by the challenges the aviation sector is facing in energy transition and decarbonisation. I hope the research project will contribute to the existing policies in this area and incentivise the government to accelerate its financial investment in energy transition in aviation.

I resolve customer disputes and I am also the well-being champion.

I am part of the BA Legal department and work as part of the Customer Dispute Resolution Executive team. I work closely with the wider Customer Service Team to mitigate and resolve customer disputes and court claims issued for delay flights, cancelled flights and denied boarding claims issued by claim management companies. I also deal with a wide variety of claims issue by litigants in person with the goal of resolving their court claims in an amicable and speedy manner that retains them as a passenger for BA and the wider group IAG. In my current position I am also the well being champion for the legal and properties directorate. My roles is to ensure that colleagues take care of their whole well being not just at work as externalizes affect their working day. I empower colleagues to address their well being through email nudges that signpost them to support they may need, reminders of well being tools available for their use, well being training sessions and organizing social events from health checks, massages, to axe throwing.

Supportive managers who offer external working opportunities in BA

Being in career transition, my manager has been very supportive in empowering me to do my work and trusting me to study at the same time. I have also been offered new working opportunities that are of interest to me in the business in the sustainability team, enabling me to learn and contribute to a different part of the business. In turn this has exposed me to new people in the business who I have added to my career network. My role as a wellbeing champion has been very rewarding by having the freehand to structure the what the team should engage in and the organising creative social events for the team. It has been very fun seeing the team relax and in a different light when involved in things outside of work. This has all been made possible by having a very supportive head of department.

Give your very best and take the opportunities you are given or see.

In my career experience at BA, my growth and development has come from taking advantage of the opportunities that have come my way especially challenging areas that are unaddressing, have received little attention or there is no clear way of resolving them. The covid pandemic exposed the limitations in public policy with the frequent government changes that resulted in overnight flight cancellations. This piqued my interest in pubic policy on improving government responsiveness in aviation. As a result this led to the MA that revealed the challenge of energy transition in aviation after working a project with the sustainability team. The wellbeing role on the other hand came as a result of volunteering and it exposed me to new areas of the business and colleagues which created a structure for the team and led me to do a management course.

Creating the well being structure for legal that ranked 2 in BA.

After the pandemic there was a need for more colleague centrality and one of the ways of achieving this was by prioritising colleagues’ mental health and wellbeing after a long period of being isolated from one another. An opportunity arose and I volunteered to be the wellbeing champion for the legal department. Being a novel area I had the freehand to input my creativity in building the system and structure for the wellbeing for the team. Coupled with the great support and empowerment from the General Counsel I designed the structure to focus on weekly email nudges with reminders on various life aspects for the team to address. I also organised social events outside work to engage the team bonding and to boast their motivation during the day. Tuesday 19 - Glucose & Cholesterol testing Waterside. Of course, no wellbeing is complete without an annual health check, but we hold two and it always engaging on who has the lowest metabolic age this year. This was a great achievement after the legal wellbeing was ranked second based on colleagues’ feedback. We will improve to the top spot this year.