VFS Releases Report on Vertical Flight Workforce: “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion is Vital”

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS) has pub­lished the results of a ground-break­ing study: “”

The 28-page study was con­duct­ed for VFS by HYSKY Soci­ety, the results of a VFS work­force analy­sis in Jan­u­ary 2020 which indi­cat­ed that the ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (VTOL) tech­nol­o­gy work­force is at a crit­i­cal junc­ture.

At the same time that the US Depart­ment of Defense has kicked off sev­er­al mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar rotor­craft acqui­si­tion efforts under the Future Ver­ti­cal Lift (FVL) ini­tia­tive, and tra­di­tion­al aero­space and defense (A&D) com­pa­nies strug­gle to fill hun­dreds of vacan­cies seek­ing tal­ent­ed VTOL engi­neers, the eVTOL rev­o­lu­tion also requires thou­sands of engi­neers.

The most expe­di­ent way to achieve the need­ed increase in VTOL tal­ent is by trans­form­ing the cur­rent work­force through pur­pose­ful diver­si­ty, equi­ty and inclu­sion (DEI) ini­tia­tives.

VFS exec­u­tive direc­tor Mike Hirschberg said: “This report is the first time that the aero­space and defense sec­tor has offi­cial­ly dis­cussed inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty, how dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences over­lap, and we hope that this will help to focus atten­tion on how the VTOL indus­try can improve its abil­i­ty to attract and retain top tal­ent.”

VFS esti­mates that each clean-sheet civ­il VTOL air­craft devel­op­ment requires around $1 bil­lion, a decade of devel­op­ment, and 1,000 employ­ees to get to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. While sev­er­al eVTOL com­pa­nies have been work­ing for sev­er­al years, many addi­tion­al devel­op­ments are also under­way.

Mil­i­tary rotor­craft devel­op­ments typ­i­cal­ly require sig­nif­i­cant­ly more time, mon­ey and employ­ees. VFS fore­casts 10,000 addi­tion­al engi­neers over and above the cur­rent work­force lev­el are need­ed in the next decade to sup­port planned mil­i­tary and civ­il rotor­craft devel­op­ments, as well the bur­geon­ing eVTOL advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) mar­ket.

Key find­ings from the report include:
1. Sig­nif­i­cant addi­tion­al fund­ing for acad­e­mia is need­ed to train enough high­ly skilled engi­neers to meet indus­try demands.
2. Train­ing new engi­neers is not enough — they must also be attract­ed and retained.
3. The most impact­ful met­ric to pre­dict employ­ee reten­tion is whether or not employ­ees feel val­ued and appre­ci­at­ed at work. An employee’s per­ceived val­ue is more impor­tant than their salary.
4. It costs a com­pa­ny about $1M to replace one high­ly skilled engi­neer, so high attri­tion can be detri­men­tal.
5. The lega­cy Aero­space and Defense (A&D) indus­try has twice the attri­tion rates than the nation­al aver­age. The advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) sec­tor has four times the attri­tion rates of the nation­al aver­age. Work­place ostracism is like­ly a major cause.
6. Work­place ostracism is the num­ber one pre­dic­tor of attri­tion rates. If it can be pre­dict­ed, it can be mit­i­gat­ed.
7. Suc­cess­ful pro­grammes exist to mit­i­gate work­force ostracism.
8. Work­force ostracism could result in a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty.
9. A&D com­pa­nies that have equi­table rep­re­sen­ta­tion at the high­est lev­el will be the most com­pet­i­tive and most like­ly to suc­ceed in the com­ing years. Con­verse­ly, com­pa­nies with­out equi­table rep­re­sen­ta­tion at the high­est lev­els will like­ly atro­phy and die.
10. Exam­in­ing the chal­lenges of the future ver­ti­cal work­force is not about being “woke,” but about col­lect­ing and ana­lyz­ing data to under­stand what caus­es some­one to be attract­ed to a com­pa­ny, feel val­ued, and want to stay.

HYSKY CEO Danielle McLean said: “The great­est threat to the A&D indus­try is the lack of DEI in the work­force, espe­cial­ly in exec­u­tive and lead­er­ship posi­tions. Lack of diver­si­ty leads to under­rep­re­sent­ed groups expe­ri­enc­ing work­place ostracism, which is the most harm­ful type of work­place mis­treat­ment and most detri­men­tal to a company’s bot­tom line. The good news is that work­force ostracism is pre­dictable, mea­sur­able and pre­ventable, so address­ing DEI chal­lenges aggres­sive­ly is key to main­tain­ing a strong A&D indus­try.”