Our people

Our airport is a dynamic place to work and there’s a deep sense of pride among our employees in the difference we make for passengers, for our community and for our country. We strive to create a workplace where people are engaged and their careers can take flight, so that collectively and individually we achieve our goals and fulfill our potential.

Of the nearly 50,000 people directly employed at Toronto Pearson, 1,798 worked at the GTAA as of December 31, 2018. Most of our employees work in management, technical, administrative and other operational roles, while some are seasonal employees hired for deicing and airfield maintenance. The majority are unionized, represented by either Unifor Local 2002 or the Pearson Airport Professional Fire Fighters Association.

To achieve our mission and vision, we need to attract, develop, engage and reward a high-performing workforce. Our people strategy focuses on five areas, each of which has specific action plans, as well as one-year and five-year goals:

Plan and attract the right talent for now and for the future.
Develop and build individual potential and sustainable talent pipelines.
Lead and engage to inspire individual and collective success.
Align and reward to leverage talent and deliver business results.
Equip and support GTAA colleagues with the right tools and expertise.

Careers taking flight in 2018

299 internal transfers or promotions
205 external hires
32 co-op students

We view our diversity as a competitive advantage. A diverse workforce ensures the airport’s ability to meet the demands of a challenging global marketplace, drives innovation and provides a warm welcome to people from around the globe. Our Diversity & Inclusion Committee is leading a five-year strategy to do even more to create a place where everyone can feel included, safe and valued, and can be their very best.

As part of our strategy, we make deliberate efforts to recruit and hire qualified job candidates from diverse backgrounds, by nurturing relationships with local community organizations that can help us source talent, and through co-op and apprenticeship programs for young people.

Our annual feedback survey measures employee engagement and invites write-in comments about what’s working and how to improve. Since 2015, our engagement score has risen from 58 per cent to 74 per cent in 2018, and is rapidly approaching the level we would need to be among the top quartile of Canadian employers.

Sky’s the limit

With the launch of a diversity internship pilot program, we welcomed our first intern, Susan Stewart, who spent six months in the Human Resources department. An Olympic athlete who represented Canada in the 1996 Atlanta Games, Susan later suffered an accident that left her with a life-threatening brain injury. After years of rehabilitation, she has made it her life’s goal to motivate others to push beyond their limitations. At the GTAA, Susan created her own blog on Yammer called “Sky’s the Limit,” sharing her experiences as an HR intern. She also completed three job shadowing experiences, including Manager of Operations, Airside, before joining us full time.

2018 highlights

To drive home the GTAA’s core value of respect, we facilitated That’s How We Fly conversations across the organization about respect in our workplace. A top-down approach to rolling out these conversations was deliberately chosen to demonstrate visible leadership support. During the sessions, employees were encouraged to speak up if they encounter inappropriate behaviour and to help create a workplace that makes us proud.
At our spring all-employee meeting, all unionized employees were given a red envelope containing a cheque for $550 in recognition of their contributions towards Toronto Pearson’s strong financial performance in 2017.
Our new People Manager Promise (PMP) is aimed at ensuring that all employees have a consistent management experience. It’s an accountability statement that tells employees what they can expect from their manager in terms of support. To help managers fulfill the expectations, we also fine-tuned the People Manager Fundamentals training program, which covers topics such as onboarding, communications, labour relations and e-learnings, and is expected to be completed by new managers within their first year. From there, managers participate in the Leadership Essentials course, a two-day workshop that gives them tactical skills to lead and support their teams. A total of 173 managers completed this Leadership Essentials curriculum in 2018.
The Pearson Aviation Academy is an innovative new training program at the GTAA. In partnership with Seneca College, the program delivers integrated airport operations training. This unique training enables us to develop manager-level knowledge and capability, and over time will help build our operational talent pipeline. The first class of 16 participants from across all areas of the business spent two months in the pilot program in 2018 and will help shape the future of this program. We plan to add to the curriculum in 2019 and beyond.
76% of GTAA employees completed a voluntary Diversity Meter census that gives us a better understanding of our workforce demographics and will inform future diversity and inclusion activities. In lead-up to the census, small group meetings were organized to explain the purpose and importance of the census and encourage participation.
Organizations with whom we partnered to source more diverse talent from the community included: Access Employment; YMCA; City of Mississauga; City of Toronto; Indigenous Works; Women in Aviation; Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion; and Careers in Aviation – Wings magazine.

Sustainability Overview