INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
WOMEN
ON THE MOVE
AT METRO
In mid-2019, Metro Trains launched a recruitment campaign aimed at getting more women to apply to become train drivers. After the job advertisements went live, more than 10,200 people applied to be drivers – and almost half of them were women. Metro Trains has an incredibly diverse workforce and is working hard to create gender diversity, so here we take a look at three of the company’s extraordinary female employees.
M
etro Trains Melbourne is passionate about ensuring its workforce reflects the passengers and communities it serves every day. Melbourne has one of the most diverse populations in Australia. Metro’s push to encourage and actively recruit for greater diversity is one way it aims to improve its business culture and the network it operates. When Metro first started operating trains in Melbourne more than a decade ago, just two per cent of train drivers were women. The company took bold and disruptive steps to shift the dial. Metro was granted special dispensation to target women in job advertisements. Today, because of those efforts, 27 per cent of drivers are women.
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June 2020 // Issue 15
JESS THIELE – TRAIN DRIVER Three years ago, Jess Thiele was working in the pharmaceutical industry and decided she needed a change of career. She saw Metro’s recruitment campaign calling on more women to apply to become train drivers, and decided to give it a go. “It’s pretty surreal looking in the mirror and seeing a 160m train behind you and all these people piling onto it, and you’re thinking, ‘I’m responsible for nearly 1,000 people’,” Ms Thiele said. Her first day on the job was an experience forever etched in her mind. “I remember driving during peak hour and there were hundreds of people on the platform – it was chock-a-block – and they were all staring expectantly at me.
I just remember thinking to myself, ‘you guys don’t know it’s my first day’. “Every day you learn new things and you put it all into practice. It’s never boring.” Ms Thiele said Metro’s push to have a greater proportion of women in operational roles is critical to the future of the rail industry. “I think some people might think it’s more of a male-oriented job, which it definitely isn’t. Metro expects women to do exactly the same job as men,” she said. “My wife has just started as a trainee train driver so she’s currently at the Metro Academy in South Kensington. At home it’s a little crazy at the moment because we have pictures up on the walls of maps and signals.
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