Our people

Our Qantas Group Behaviours — Responsible, Respectful, Resilient and Excellence — are the foundation of the Qantas Group Strategic Plan and set the standard for how we do things every day.

The Behaviours are built on what makes us unique, sets us apart and provide common language to guide expectations of ourselves and others.

The Behaviours are incorporated into all parts of the employee life cycle and are integral to how we onboard, recognise, give feedback on performance and ensure our ongoing commitment to safety.

The Qantas Group People Strategic Plan supports our vision of enabling our people to be and do their best in a safe and inclusive culture.

As the Qantas Group recovers from the COVID- 19 pandemic, we know it is important to recognise the significant role of our employees in contributing to our ongoing recovery. This has been reflected in initiatives such as:

• A Recovery and Retention program, awarding 1,000 share rights to 17,000 eligible non-executive employees and awarding managers and senior executives a share right-based bonus in August 2023, subject to performance and service conditions being met
• A one-off recovery boost of $5,000 to EBA-covered Qantas Group employees once new enterprise agreements are finalised
• An improved staff travel offering for employees as part of our Employee Value Proposition (EVP), to include always on discounts for commercial tickets and an increased number of staff travel beneficiaries.

We value our people’s diverse lived experience and believe that our inclusive culture contributes to our strength and success.

 Our diversity of thought and experience helps us to understand our customers, make better decisions and get things done safely. Our aim is to build a safe and inclusive culture by championing equity and celebrating diversity.

 In 2021, we launched a three-year Inclusion and Diversity Strategy to drive better business outcomes and an improved people experience through shared accountability for inclusion and diversity. This strategy builds upon the work delivered under the Group’s 2018–2021 Inclusion and Diversity Strategy.

The implementation of our strategy is driven by all leaders, with the support of the Inclusion and Diversity team together with employee-based networks such as Altitude, Illuminate and Daramu.

The key pillars of our Inclusion and Diversity Strategy incorporate a spotlight on gender balance, including our new three-year gender target, delivery of the Qantas Group Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) and the restart of initiatives across our LGBTQI+ and Accessibility programs.

Across the Group, we work with a number of partner organisations including Champions of Change Coalition, Chief Executive Women, Reconciliation Australia, Australia Network on Disability, and Pride and Diversity to help support our long-term commitments.

We have a solid foundation of Inclusion and Diversity and have been broadening our focus to better reflect who we are as an organisation. Our six key focus areas are outlined below.

Gender balance: Qantas continues its long-term commitment to challenging stereotypes and ensuring merit-based gender diversity in aviation. Having reached our previous goal of 38 per cent of women in senior management roles, we have set a new goal to increase this to 42 per cent by 2024.  In addition, Qantas has agreed to targets for the 'IATA 25 by 2025 Initiative', with a focus on increasing female pilots within the organisation and female nominations for IATA governance roles. We also continue our focus on the Nancy Bird Walton initiative to reach 40 per cent intake of female cadet pilots by 2028. We partner with external organisations such as Champions of Change Coalition and Chief Executive Women to help support our long-term commitments.

Reconciliation Action Plan - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Careers and Inclusion: We have a proud history of championing reconciliation. We launched our first Reconciliation Action Plan in 2007 and our first Elevate RAP in 2015. We had anticipated launching the next iteration of our Elevate RAP in 2020 but were unable to do so due to the impacts of COVID-19. We released an interim RAP in January 2021, which was expanded to include actions for all parts of the Qantas Group, including Jetstar. At the beginning of 2022, Qantas Group employees were invited to complete a Reconciliation Australia Leadership Survey with results to be used to support the development and implementation of the new RAP.

LGBTI+ Inclusion: Qantas has a long history supporting the LGBTI+ community. We recognise the challenges faced by our people who identify as LGBTI+ and are committed to creating an inclusive environment, regardless of gender identity, gender expression, sexuality or intersex status.

Accessibility and Inclusion: Removing barriers in processes and environments so that people of all abilities, including those with visible and invisible disabilities, can meaningfully engage in work and with our products and services.

Cultural and linguistic diversity: We embrace all cultures and languages, and the new perspectives and insights they provide.

Life ages and stages: Supporting our people to do their best work at any time in their lives through identifying and removing barriers at all ages and stages. 

Key information:

Our People Metrics are reported in the 2022 Sustainability ReportOpens external site in a new window

• Inclusion and Diversity Policy (PDF)
• Gender Diversity Reporting
• Reconciliation Partnerships