The aviation industry is entering one of the biggest hiring cycles in its history. An estimated 2.3m new professionals will be needed globally by 2044, with 1.5m people required in the next decade, writes Menzies Aviation chief people officer, Juliet Thomson.
Competition for talent is already intense. Employers who limit their search to traditional pipelines will struggle to keep pace.
Widening the talent pipeline to include refugees is a competitive advantage that too few employers have explored, both within aviation and beyond.
Research from the Tent Partnership for Refugees (Tent) in 2018 found that 73% of companies reported higher retention rates among refugee employees than the wider workforce.
That trend is seen across industries and geographies. When people are given a genuine opportunity, they tend to stay and grow with the organisation that provided it.
The UN Refugee Agency reported that by the end of 2025, more than 117m people had been forcibly displaced worldwide.
That’s roughly one in every 70 people on the planet. Behind that number are individuals with skills, experience and the determination to rebuild their lives.
At Menzies Aviation, we employ 65,000 people across 65 countries and 347 airports. We operate in one of the most safety-critical, fast-moving industries in the world.
And over the past few years, we’ve seen first-hand how refugee hiring strengthens our teams, broadens our talent pipeline and delivers real results.
Too often, corporate commitments to inclusion remain just that – commitments. Statements of intent that never translate into operational change. We wanted to do things differently. But we couldn’t do it on our own.
In 2022, we joined Tent, a global network of businesses committed to integrating refugees into the workforce.
Earlier this year, we formalised a global charity partnership with the UK for UNHCR, following close collaboration in 2025.
Together, we approached this as a long-term, workforce strategy rather than a Corporate Social Responsibility initiative.
Our focus is on reducing the roadblocks to employment that refugees commonly face, expanding our candidate pipeline and ensuring refugees can apply and receive fair consideration for open roles.
The results speak for themselves. To date, Menzies has hired more than 120 refugees globally. In Guadalajara, Mexico, a joint recruitment event with UNHCR, local authorities and the British Embassy led to more than 35 job offers.
Since the start of 2025, we have hired more than 60 refugees in Mexico alone, with 47 of those in Guadalajara. We are also building programmes across Romania, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Spain, France, Italy and the UK, and exploring opportunities in Uganda, Colombia, Chile and Egypt.
Practical barriers
But hiring is only the beginning. What makes these programmes work is addressing the practical barriers that come after the offer letter: accommodation, transport, language support, access to banking services.
Refugee integration succeeds when employers think beyond recruitment and invest in the full onboarding journey and ongoing support.
While we have made good progress in some countries, in others we have faced structural barriers. Aviation is a regulated industry, and rightly so. Security and vetting processes exist for good reason.
But these systems were not designed with displaced people in mind, and they can unintentionally exclude candidates who are qualified, capable and ready to work.
In the UK, for example, obtaining an airside pass requires identity verification, background checks and a continuous five-year employment history.
For someone who has fled conflict or persecution, providing original documents, continuous address records or employer references from a country of origin may be difficult, or in some cases impossible.
We have seen cases where candidates met every requirement except one that the system simply was not built to accommodate.
The security standards themselves aren’t the issue. It’s how they’re applied, and whether there’s room for more flexibility without compromising safety. Other countries have found ways to maintain rigour while building in flexibility.
In Germany, refugees who cannot provide full documentation can demonstrate their skills through practical assessments or adaptation periods.
In Canada, the aviation security clearance process accepts a wider set of supporting documents for foreign nationals. These models show that safety and inclusivity are not mutually exclusive.
No single employer can solve the systemic barriers that prevent refugees from accessing meaningful employment. Progress depends on collaboration between businesses, regulators, industry bodies and community partners.
Organisations like UNHCR and Tent are essential in connecting employers with candidates, sharing best practice and shaping programmes that work across different markets and regulatory environments.
What businesses can do is stop treating refugee hiring as peripheral or a ‘nice to do’. Build it into workforce planning. Invest in the full journey – onboarding, integration, and long-term support. Measure the impact and share what works.
This Refugee Week, the theme is “courage”. It is worth recognising the courage it takes to start again in a new country, in a new industry, often a new language. But courage alone is not enough.
It needs to be met with opportunity, and that is something every employer has the power to create.
