Natasha checks out of rail with pride

Business Services Director for DRS Natasha Hanson on her time within the industry

Natasha Hanson, Business Services Director for Direct Rail Services (DRS), is in a reflective mood as she moves closer to the end of her tenure.

With Natasha in post, DRS has won a number of equality, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) awards and was named as top employer at 2019’s Women In Rail awards. Individually, Natasha has been recognised by the Rail Delivery Group for the work she has done around ED&I and was also a finalist in the Institute of Directors North West and Isle of Man Director of the Year Awards 2020.

Natasha will leave the rail industry at the end of 2020 but does so with tremendous pride in the strides that DRS has made around ED&I, driving forward women in the rail industry and introducing training programmes and new initiatives around inclusivity, ensuring all colleagues, from all backgrounds, are supported – a culture now firmly embedded across DRS.

Natasha said: “I believe really passionately in what we do. I have loved working in rail. It’s been an absolutely first-rate experience and the people at DRS are the most exceptional group I have ever worked with. I’ve been very proud to pull on the DRS uniform on an almost daily basis.”

Natasha initially joined DRS from parent company the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in January 2017 on an interim basis when NDA’s subsidiary required help with the development of its people agenda.

DRS liked what Natasha brought to the team and, in turn, Natasha liked DRS. An opportunity arose to make the move a permanent one with a wide-ranging role that combined responsibility for HR, IT & cyber, communication and stakeholder engagement, as well as establishing a new training academy, training programmes, leadership development and looking after DRS’s corporate services.

Business development goals Natasha explained: “I came to DRS with operations and some railway experience, but I wanted something more than a HR role. I wanted to broaden my leadership experience and the Business Services Director role has enabled me to help the business develop while also grow as a leader.”

Working with DRS MD at the time, Debbie Francis, provided Natasha with inspiration and direction and it quickly became clear that both women were on a similar page when it came to people. Natasha said: “Debbie was very receptive to the ideas I had around people

If you look after your people, first and foremost, they will look after the business for you. That’s the approach I’ve taken during my time at DRS

and we shared similar values in terms of getting the people agenda right. As she said, if you look after your people, first and foremost, they will look after the business for you. That’s the approach I’ve taken during my time at DRS and it’s covered a myriad of things.”

Natasha’s new approach centred around colleagues’ health and well-being, focusing on their work/life balance and the changes DRS could make to help retain its people. The introduction of a flexible approach to working was introduced, allowing DRS staff to choose their hours, working at different times of the day, or compressing their hours to work fewer days. Natasha added: “We recognise that our people are at work to build their lives outside of work. If we make sure that everything they need is in place to enable they are happy, then, as a result, they will deliver great work for DRS.”

Family friendly policies This includes the introduction of familyfriendly policies that enable shared parental leave and a ‘blind’ recruitment process, which removes information which could influence decisions other than skill, knowledge and ability, addressing underlying and implicit issues that manifest themselves during recruitment and therefore encouraging under-represented groups to join DRS.

Natasha said: “It just makes the whole process fair and equitable as it removes unconscious bias. It makes you think differently about the recruitment process. It’s all just about making sure you get the right candidate for the job, that’s the only thing that matters.”

DRS also pays a minimum of the national living wage, as opposed to the national

LISTA STORAGE SYSTEMS KEEP YOU ON TRACK

BENEFITS

+ Comprehensive range from A for access control to W for workstation systems + The system concept all products can be freely combined + Bespoke solutions for customers with specific needs

www.lista.com

+ Maximum flexibility with a choice of colours, configuration options and more + Expert planning with our LISTA Draw visualisation software + 10-year guarantee unique in the industry

CALL US NOW OR SEND AN E-MAIL 01908 222333 info.uk@lista.com

minimum wage, while apprentices are also paid achievement bonuses, which has made the company an employer of choice for colleges and driven recruitment and staff retention.

Natasha added: “People want to work for us and the work we’ve done in recent years has led to a self-fulfilling prophecy. We look for the best and take the best on, we work with our colleagues in the unions to make sure that our terms and conditions are right. Our attrition rates have fallen from 30 per cent to lower than seven. This really is one of the best places to work and people are really proud to be part of team DRS.”

On Natasha’s watch, DRS has also implemented a volunteering policy that allows employees to take up to five paid days a year to volunteer and support projects.

“I was proud to lead the way on that policy, it was something I was really passionate about introducing,” she said. In March 2019, Natasha herself volunteered in India, teaching English and Microsoft Office skills to women, and plans are already well underway for her next voluntary trip, where she will head to Laos with Debbie Francis to teach English to novice Buddhist monks.

Sharing best practice The good news for the rail industry is that DRS’s best practice is readily shared with others, including at the Rail Delivery Group’s HR forum and across the Rail Safety and Standards Board’s industry suicide prevention duty holders’ group.

DRS’s approach to flexible working ensured that, when lockdown threatened to grind industry to a halt back in March, business carried on seamlessly, with home working enabled by Webex, the video conferencing, online meeting, screen share, and webinar solution, which was already used extensively across the business.

During lockdown, Natasha was delighted to see that “our people stepped up to the challenge magnificently.” She added: “It was another proud moment for me as I saw a number of people taking up leadership roles, people who I’ve coached in my time who may not have had the confidence to do so previously, who I’ve seen blossom and grow. I now know the business will be in safe hands with those people for years to come.”

Natasha will remain in contact with the rail industry after her DRS departure. She has already been contacted to provide consultancy services around mental health in rail and her many friends from the rail family – including Freightliner’s freight driver Heather Waugh, Freightliner’s HR Advisor and Rail Human Library founder, Tracey Barber, railway chaplain Mike Roberts, and Debbie Francis – will ensure the connection is ongoing.

“Rail is a lot like The Eagles’ song Hotel California. You can check out any time you like but you can never leave. I’ll still be around.

“We don’t have all of the answers and there are still a lot of challenges ahead and lots to be done. At DRS, we’re in the fortunate position that our parent company firmly believes in the ED&I agenda. It’s part of our business, part of what we do as the norm. As an industry we have to expand on what we’ve managed to achieve in terms of addressing gender inequality and move to disability, race, and other areas of equality and look at more inclusivity, and what different people can bring to the business.

I would say to leaders in rail that you have to listen to the people you work with, they are your experts

“We need to recruit people who think differently, who are willing to challenge the status quo and to do things differently. There’s always going to be work to do but, at DRS, we have a groundswell of people moving in the right direction. I would say to leaders in rail that you have to listen to the people you work with, they are your experts on the ground and can provide you with a different perspective to what you’d get around the boardroom table. Listen to them, they know what they’re talking about.

“As I look to move on I hope that I can bring the level of enthusiasm and dedication I’ve seen in rail to my next challenge in the workplace. I’ve been proud to play a part in rail.”

Honouring the Time Promise

Martin Howell of Worldline on reforming rail

For the UK’s rail operators, the last year has been devastating, with the collapse in rail passenger numbers necessitating government intervention to keep the industry functioning.

It would be easy to see this as a disaster, but out of this trauma there is now an opportunity to enact change for the better. Rail has always been about honouring the Time Promise, repeatedly shown to be the number one priority for customers – that is, getting people where they want to get to, on time, every time. We have a chance now to make the delivery on that promise a reality.

Time for fares reform Long overdue fares reform and the chance to implement proven technologies to help run services more efficiently and cost effectively may well, if the industry is bold enough, see it come back stronger than before. Clearly, although it is inevitable that our working lives will have changed, once we start functioning once more as a normal society, people will be travelling more for work and leisure.

For the rail industry, the priority now must be to attract customers back to the network safely, and to begin to build up the revenue to relieve the burden on the taxpayer that ERMA represents. But with vision and ambition, it is surely possible to go beyond that goal of eventual recovery. Reforming the previously impenetrable fare structure and making it simple to find the most cost-effective price for a rail journey will help rail become the engine of social mobility which it should be, enabling access for all and opportunities for education and employment.

It’s about the data As with so much else in life, the industry must use available data to enhance the customer experience across the board. Historically, we have been scratching the surface with the extent to which data analysis has been applied.

“For the rail industry, the priority now must be to attract customers back to the network safely”

Being transparent about how data is stored and used, and giving valuable actionable intelligence to customers who voluntarily give up data about their movements and behaviours, will draw them back into a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship with rail providers.

This has to go beyond the ‘we have no buffet on board’ or ‘there are empty seats in carriage F’ messages and encompass end-to-end travel, putting rail at the centre of the Mobility as a Service experience.

There have been numerous projects in recent years demonstrating visibility of where customers have travelled from and to, before joining a train service and after leaving it. There is no reason why this should not become standard practice in the industry, enabling a much richer traveller experience. Likewise, accurate data about customer movements will enable better service planning and reduced costs.

Ingenico acquisition Worldline has a long heritage in the UK rail industry. With its recent acquisition of Ingenico, the company is now the largest payment services provider in Europe and is well placed to support and increase the momentum of the drive towards a simplified and more attractive customer experience for rail users and a truly digital railway. People are used to transparent, straightforward and fast transactions in most other buying experiences, and rail should be no different.

Rail can be the hub of a social mobility revolution, delivering on a green agenda and enabling Mobility as a Service throughout the UK if we have the vision and courage to grasp the opportunities that the pandemic has, inadvertently, afforded us.

Visit www.worldline.com for more information or email martin.howell@worldline.com

www.viztekltd.co.uk

• UK’s No.1 Manufacturer & Installer • Unique Chamfered Edge Tactile • Way-Finding Specialists • Unrivalled Track Record • 30 + Stations This Year Alone • 10 Year Guarantee On All Works

“The new Chamfered Edge Tactile Paving design is a vast improvement and one that we fully endorse and would like to see as a national standard throughout the UK. As we would endorse anything that improves on the safety aspect of products and materials used on or around the operational railway.” NR Asset Management South East Route