How an aviation company ensures employees have the training to recognize potential warning signs and report concerns through the proper channels. 

By Amy Alexy 

Frontline employees are often the first people to notice when something doesn’t seem right. Whether they’re working in retail, hospitality, tourism, transportation, or aviation, these employees interact with the public every day in ways that managers and executives often do not. At airports, that includes customer service representatives, line service technicians, dispatchers, passenger service agents, and others who are constantly moving throughout the operation and engaging with travelers. 

That’s why human trafficking awareness shouldn’t be viewed solely as a security responsibility. HR also has an important role to play by ensuring employees have the training and confidence to recognize potential warning signs, understand their role, and know how to report concerns through the proper channels. For organizations with large frontline workforces, this is an essential part of preparing employees for the realities of their jobs. 

Trafficking does not hide in places employees never go. It moves through the same infrastructure many rely on to get to work every day. Research from the International Organization for Migration, drawing on more than 80,000 trafficking cases across 178 countries, found that nearly 80% of international trafficking journeys pass through official border-control points, including the airports and transit hubs where Signature Aviation teams spend their entire careers. 

That statistic shows that employees are not bystanders to this issue. They are already standing inside the exact infrastructure where it happens. The question is not whether the workforce has the opportunity to notice something wrong. It is whether they have the training and the confidence to act on what they see. 

The scale of the problem is not shrinking either. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported a 25% global increase in detected trafficking victims compared to 2019. With this in mind, organizations have to consider this not just a specialized security function; it has to become part of how HR builds culture across an entire workforce. 

How to Train Frontline Employees to Spot Trafficking 

Signature Aviation has a dedicated corporate security team, and that foundation matters. However, security protocols alone do not change behavior; people do. That’s why trafficking awareness has to live in the workplace culture. Over the past several years, Signature Aviation has worked to embed trafficking awareness training into onboarding, ongoing learning, and leadership conversation development for frontline teams. Three lessons stand out, guided by three principles that HR leaders should consider adopting. 

1. Train for confidence, not just awareness. Employees may recognize the warning signs of trafficking, but still hesitate to speak up. Effective training gives people the confidence to act by making reporting expectations clear, reinforcing that concerns will be taken seriously, and creating a culture where raising a hand is viewed as the right thing to do. 
2. Build shared ownership across functions. Human trafficking awareness isn’t solely an HR responsibility or a security responsibility. Security teams establish response protocols, but HR ensures training is accessible, relevant, and reinforced across different roles, locations, and levels of the organization. The strongest programs are built together. 
3. Leverage partnerships to strengthen overall impact. No single organization has all the answers, particularly when confronting an issue as complex as human trafficking. When it was recognized that existing aviation training largely focused on commercial operations and left a gap for the general aviation community, Signature Aviation partnered with an industry association to help develop general aviation-specific training that’s now available to the broader industry. Whether it’s collaborating with industry groups, nonprofits, or peer organizations, HR leaders can often create more meaningful and scalable change by working together than by tackling these challenges in isolation. 

A Three-Step Framework for HR to Launch Trafficking-Awareness Training 

Trafficking-awareness training does not require a large budget or a standalone department. It requires intention, and it requires HR to claim ownership rather than deferring entirely to security or compliance. Based on what has worked at Signature Aviation, these three steps are a good place to start. 

1. Audit onboarding. If trafficking awareness is not part of new-hire training today, it should be. Waiting for a perfect program is worse than starting with an imperfect one. 
2. Partner with security, but keep ownership. Let subject-matter experts shape the content. HR should own the delivery, the reinforcement, and the culture-building that determines whether training actually sticks. 
3. Measure engagement, not just completion. A completed training module means nothing if employees do not feel empowered to act. Build in feedback loops that show whether the training is changing behavior and not just checking a compliance box. 

Any frontline employee could be the one to recognize that something isn’t right. Whether they know what to look for and how to respond depends on the training they receive. That’s why human trafficking awareness isn’t just a security issue: it’s a workforce readiness issue, and one HR has a responsibility to lead. 

 

Amy Alexy is chief people officer at Signature Aviation, where she leads the company’s human trafficking awareness training programs, and a board member at Covenant House International.