Media centre

Friday 11 Mar 2016

Female employees join forces to celebrate Network Rail as an equal opportunities employer

Region & Route:

National

One hundred women joined forces this week in Network Rail to further progress the company's plans to improve diversity in the work place.  The conference that coincides with International Women’s Day was organised by Inspire - one of six staff networks in Network Rail that bring different groups of people together.  Other very active networks include Archway for LBGT staff with over 300 members, ‘Cultural Fusion’ our BAME network with over 300 members, ‘Can do’ our disability network with over 100 members, Myriad our Carers’ Network with other 100 members and our Multi-faith Network with over 100 members.
 
The event was kicked off by Network Rail Chief Executive, Mark Carne.  In his remarks he noted that Network Rail is leading the rail industry in diversity thinking and action.  

"Women now represent 25 percent of  both our board and executive committee. We have a good proportion of women in our most significant leadership programme – the Accelerated Leaders Programme and we are growing our gender and ethnicity diversity in our early entrant programmes, particularly our graduate programme. Our diversity and inclusion strategy, Spaces and Places for Everyone, is highly regarded across the rail and engineering sectors.  We have an award winning industry acclaimed diversity and inclusion team and we have run a significant number of diversity awareness programmes across the business - with over 3,500 attendees. We know that there is more to do - but the transformation in the last two years is something to celebrate."
 
The success of these programmes and the excitement of being part of the biggest transformation of Britain's rail industry in history has made Network Rail an employer of choice. The last two years have seen record numbers of high quality applicants applying for our Apprentice and Graduate programmes, and this year we had 20,000 applications for the 400 places.