Women in Rail

Women in Rail Shona Clive

Driving positive change

Shona Clive

Restrictions are beginning to ease across the country, marking a welcome development for early 2022 and Women in Rail is looking forward to the year ahead with much optimism says

Shona Clive

Change is afoot after almost 24 months of the Covid pandemic in the UK. There have been significant changes announced in the rail sector with the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail including the establishment of a new body, Great British Railways. Part of the Williams-Shapps Plan includes ‘a real opportunity to bring greater diversity into the sector to enable it to better represent the communities it serves’ and the development of ‘a sector-wide people strategy to attract diverse talent’. Women in Rail welcomes this approach and is committed to supporting the GBR Transition Team in this area of its work.

Change has also been seen in the way we work, with many of us working from home during the pandemic. This has had benefits and challenges. It has allowed more of us to spend time at home with families and loved one with commuting times reduced and according to a report by the CIPD on ‘Flexible Working: lessons from the pandemic’, two thirds (71 per cent) of survey participants said that homeworking had no detrimental impact on productivity. 33 per cent of that figure said that productivity improved and 38 per cent say it was unchanged. Other benefits included 46 per cent of survey participants noting increased wellbeing working from home and 39 per cent citing enhanced wellbeing because of greater flexibility of hours.

Of course, there are downsides too in some circumstances, with reduced mental health wellbeing, the unsuitability of certain jobs for working from home, insufficient IT, unsuitable home circumstances and a lack of staff engagement among others. A recent McKinsey and Company podcast focused on the impact of home working on women causing burnout and fatigue. 42 per cent of women in the survey that formed the Women in the Workplace 2021 report said that they were burned out and or fatigued during the pandemic. The context behind this is that women do a disproportionate amount of additional work in an office setting and a disproportionate amount of work at home too with one in three women and 60 per cent of mothers spending five or more hours a day on housework and caregiving. This is an important area for businesses to be aware of as many people are reconsidering their careers and how they want to work in the future. Flexible working is here to stay and a number of companies may need to address how they adapt to this change.

Throughout the last twelve months, Women in Rail has continued to support its members by running 67 virtual events touching on topical issues including mental health, returning to the office and hybrid working as well as several personal development workshops. If you haven’t seen it yet, we have recently published our End of Year Report (link here) which documents all the fantastic activities that Women in Rail has delivered over 2021. A huge thank you to all our volunteers and our members for supporting us.

There has been a bit of change at Women in Rail too with our incredible founder and inspirational leader for almost a decade, Adeline Ginn stepping down in October last year and Christine Fernandes, Business Development at CAF and former regional leader of Women in Rail Wales being appointed as the new Chair of Women in Rail. We have welcomed three new Regional Chairs; Gemma Southgate for Wales, Sarah Birtles for Yorkshire and Lorna Gibson for Scotland. We also are hopeful for a change in the way we run events for our members with face-to-face events beginning to make a return.

In terms of a lookahead, this year is a rather special year for Women in Rail as we approach our 10 Year Anniversary in April. We will be announcing lots of activities over the year to celebrate the progress and success of Women in Rail over the past ten years. We also have the launch of our Mentoring Programme, an incredibly successful programme run by partner organisation Moving Ahead which has seen over 2000 people being supported across 26 organisations since the partnership was set up in 2014. The mentoring programme supports all participants to advance their professional development and personal growth, with the belief that the programme also serves to encourage lateral thinking, as well as cross-fertilisation of ideas and networks across the industry.

We also have the Women in Rail Awards on the 19 May where we celebrate and recognise all our colleagues, teams and companies who help create a more gender balanced, diverse and inclusive work culture in our industry.

Thich Nhat Hanh once said: ‘Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible’ change is sometimes uncomfortable, we embrace the new landscape with hope and positivity not forgetting our roots and core purpose of creating a more inclusive, diverse and equal rail industry in the years ahead.