Development

British Airways takes flight

British Airways

Industry

Aviation

Function

Leadership & Talent Development

British Airways (BA) has a rich history spanning more than a century, with 30,000 dedicated people keeping its world-class operations running.

While traditional development programmes provided theoretical grounding, participants lacked opportunities to practice real-world decision-making and build confidence in high-pressure scenarios.

Objective

Elevating performance & succession planning

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, BA prioritised its people. The airline needed a future-fit talent strategy aligned with its leadership behaviours while being transparent, fair, and inclusive

Key priorities included:

Skills-based assessment

Creating a skills-based approach to assessing potential across all talent bands

Succession planning

Ensuring succession planning was robust, structured, and data-led

Leadership empowerment

Empowering high-potential employees to step into leadership roles

Solution

A data-led approach to talent development

Cappfinity partnered with BA to introduce a strengths-based methodology that accurately identifies skills, potential, and leadership readiness.

The first step was to co-create an interactive, immersive, and objective tool to assess talent potential across different levels of the organisation.

What began as a singular skills assessment has since expanded into several talent programmes, each focused on:

Self-insight

Career development

Leadership progression

Highflyers: accelerating growth for top talent

First launched in 2023, the Grow Your Talent programme has invited more than 4,000 Band 2 and 3 colleagues to complete a ‘Your Potential’ questionnaire.

Results from the survey — combined with BA’s values, leadership behaviours, performance data, and manager feedback — plot each individual on a talent grid measuring potential, skills, strengths and performance. Those identified as top talent were invited to join BA Highflyers — a dedicated programme designed to fast-track high-potential individuals that had previously been flying under the radar.

Self-insight & personal development

Strengths-based assessments and career mapping

Immersive experiences

Reality (VR) development centres and 1:1 coaching

Hands-on learning

Multi-day workshops and teamwork sessions

experienced a job title change within months

moved into more challenging roles, indicating promotions

rated sessions as Excellent or Very Good

felt more confident in their career progression

Scaling Success

Leadership development for senior talent

Alongside the success of Highflyers, Cappfinity developed a programme for high-potential Band 1 colleagues at the Senior Leader and Transformation Leadership Group level.

Every Band 1 colleague completed our Altitude Leadership Skills Assessment, mapped to BA’s leadership behaviours.

The top 10 performing participants — identified as future Management Committee leaders — then embarked on a 12-month Executive Coaching Programme designed to accelerate their leadership potential.

This included:

A fully immersive VR coaching experience to uncover authentic leadership behaviours

Personalised development pathways to enhance self-awareness

1:1 coaching cycles designed to accelerate leadership readiness

Impact of the Band 1 programme:

of participants would recommend VR coaching to a peer

reported improved self-understanding following the VR coaching experience

felt motivated and energised to apply what they had learned

found the coaching sessions beneficial to their development

“Partnering with Cappfinity has been a game-changer for BA’s talent strategy. Their scientific approach to skills has helped us uncover and address a critical gap — empowerment within our organisation. This was a key factor in our transformation, particularly given the deeply ingrained hierarchy in aviation, where many of our senior leaders started as cabin crew or pilots. Cappfinity’s insights and tailored programmes have given our people the confidence and capability to step up, challenge the status quo, and take ownership of their career growth. The impact has been transformational, and we’re excited to continue this journey — embedding a truly skills-based culture across BA”

Laura Whalley, Performance & Talent Strategy Manager at BA

Recognition

BA’s transformative talent strategy has not only redefined development but has also earned top industry recognition.

At The Learning Awards, BA’s partnership with Cappfinity won Gold in the External Learning Solution of the Year category. This prestigious award celebrates outstanding collaboration between an organisation and an external provider to deliver measurable impact through innovative learning solutions. The Learning Awards judging panel praised BA’s talent development approach as an exemplary model of ambition, scalability, and inclusivity, with strong impact data and a clear vision for the future. The recognition cements BA’s position as a trailblazer in skills-first talent mobility, setting a benchmark for the aviation industry and beyond.

“A very impressive example of a talent development programme that demonstrated ambition in terms of intent and scale. The various components were well thought out and delivered, and embodied exemplary inclusive practice. It was also obvious that the working relationship between vendor and client was a very effective one, and will be ongoing. Impact data was strong, and the project team clearly had a vision for where they wanted to go next with the solution.”

A judge at The Learning Awards

What’s Next?

Elevating to new heights

With three Grow Your Talent programmes delivered and Highflyers now an annual initiative, BA is setting a new standard in skills-based talent mobility. But this is just the beginning.

We are now partnering with BA to build a comprehensive skills framework that will support all 30,000 colleagues — ensuring recruitment, development, and progression align seamlessly with BA’s long-term business strategy. By continuing to identify, invest in, and elevate talent, BA is building a workforce that is not only fit for today’s challenges but ready to take on the future of aviation. The runway is clear — it’s BA’s time to soar.

This next phase will:

Define critical skills across BA’s workforce to meet evolving industry demand

Support BA in empowering their colleagues to take control of their own careers

Futureproof succession planning, ensuring high potential talent is nurtured and developed

Embed a skills-first culture, where talent mobility is driven by strengths, not just experience

“BA had a clear vision: to evolve into a skills-based organisation that identifies, develops, and retains its best talent at every level. Together, we took a data-driven approach to assess strengths across key Bands, aligning our work with BA’s long-term succession planning. By co-creating initiatives that focus on self-insight and individual development, we’ve not only empowered BA colleagues to own their career growth, but we’ve also equipped BA with critical workforce intelligence — giving leaders a clear view of skills, strengths, and future potential. Seeing the progression of the Highflyers and the engagement of Band 1 leaders has been incredible. We’re now collaborating on a full skills framework, which will be the foundation for BA’s continued transformation.”

Celine Floyd, Chief Skills Officer at Cappfinity