CEO MONTHLY / CHAIRPERSON AWARDS 2023 8 Located near Crawley, West Sussex, London Gatwick Airport is the UK’s second largest airport, serving as a hub for a range of short and long-haul point-to-point services. Having joined four years ago as a Data Protection Executive, Holly Jubb is currently the airport’s Data Protection Officer and Co-Chair of its first Business Resource Group: Equal Plane. Here, we dive into her incredible work. For many years, it has been a well-known fact that certain industries lack diversity and female leaders. Unfortunately, this inequality is particularly prevalent in aviation. As a result, a group of women came together to form Equal Plane, aiming to remove barriers, provide support, and promote the talents of women at all levels of the business. Passionate about driving gender equality in her place of work, Holly stood up to take the position of Co-Chair of Equal Plane alongside her colleague Amanda Jakes. Since then, three other Business Resource Groups have been established as part of London Gatwick’s efforts to increase inclusivity and diversity across the business, each focused on racial ethnicity, disability, and Pride, which promotes LGBTQ+ matters. Equal Plane is constantly working to develop initiatives in order to achieve its goals. Together, the team choose a workstream to focus on, using feedback from colleagues across the business whilst taking into account their own priorities and passions. For example, with 20% of London Gatwick’s staff being in the menopausal age bracket, Equal Plane identified that providing proper support to these individuals may minimise their required sick leave, alleviating stress on their team. For this reason, the group ran sessions to educate managers on how to support menopausal staff members, enacted changes to uniforms for when women were suffering from hot flushes, created welfare areas where women could have a break when needed, set up menopause support groups, and more. With a leadership team comprised of individuals in various roles across the business, Equal Plane’s projects are led by the member whose skills and interests are best aligned with the desired outcome. The group strives for its initiatives to have as much visibility in the business as possible, so it leverages newsletters, networking events, and communication channels. In her leadership of Equal Plane, Holly draws on her experience as a Data Protection Officer, which has involved building a brand, bringing people along on the journey, and opening their eyes to ideas that they may have never considered before. She explains, “Bringing people on a DE&I journey is similar. It is essentially a hearts and minds project; you must be collaborative and inclusive. You need to put a lot of work into communicating why this is useful to all staff and why this is nothing they need to be frightened of.” Holly is passionate about the fact that Equal Plane serves as a valuable development opportunity for women across the business, enabling them to gain experience on a leadership team where they can present to executives and run events. As well as this, she hopes for the group to be a safe space for people who have had negative experiences in the past, enabling them to come together and make positive changes for others in similar positions. “I am so proud of the work that Equal Plane has done around the business, making tangible improvements for the women at London Gatwick,” Holly comments. “I will continue to work on it as long as I am at London Gatwick, and I take so much pleasure in knowing that I have had a small impact on making the airport a fantastic place to work for women.” For her excellent work as Co-Chair of Equal Plane, Holly Jubb has been named Aviation Chairperson of the Year in the Chairperson Awards 2023. In the future, she and her team intend to continue their work, with their priorities for 2024 including financial education programmes for women and focussing on the returning from maternity leave experience particularly in support of their female colleagues in the more operational roles in security. Contact Details Contact: Holly Jubb Company: London Gatwick Airport Web Address: www.gatwickairport.com Aviation Chairperson of the Year 2023 (UK): Holly Jubb
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