In the People Department, we're aware that the way people in British Airways behave towards each other has a direct impact on the way they behave towards our customers. So engendering an environment where everyone is treated with respect and the utmost professionalism is one of our highest priorities.

We also know that the way people feel about the company they work for has a big influence on the levels of motivation they apply to their individual role. Working towards ensuring good staff morale within an accountable and high performing organisation is therefore vital - and an activity that will be a consistently high priority in the years ahead.

As a team, our role is to ensure the business has the right people with the right skills to help us achieve our corporate goals. But the unique challenges that this brief involves illustrates what makes the airline business unlike any other. Think about how large our operations are - the varied locations around the world, the vast numbers of people employed in centres like Heathrow and Gatwick - and you begin to realise the size of the task. We need to ensure that everyone operates as part of a team with a clear management structure to lead and support them.

And in an industry as competitive and susceptible to change as this, we have a constantly evolving range of issues to address, not least of which is ensuring that our managers have the leadership skills to deliver change through the involvement of their people. We also need to focus on more efficient ways of working, through simplifying and transforming our people processes and using them to help us manage individual and organisational performance.

Our services range from recruitment to training, from reward management to diversity and inclusion and from change management to employee relations. Look at the variety of activities in which we play a vital - if not leading - role, and it's clear that a proactive and progressive human resources function is vital to the continued success of our business.