Marie Daly: Chair's Blog

Firstly, can I wish all parents good luck 🍀 as we start the school holiday period. A time of year when multi-tasking skills are required to coordinate work and full-time childcare needs or dropping off older cherubs 😇for play dates and activities. I believe since COVID it is a lot easier to have honest conversations about the work and childcare balance however not necessarily resulting in solutions for the issues many of us face. I have heard many great initiatives being deployed across the industry. Increase in term time contracts, creating flexibility in the working day with colleagues working in the evening for parts of the summer holidays as a temporary solution, where possible home working with a shortened week using one days leave but having 1.5 hours each day. The solutions will depend on people’s roles. However, what we can all do is provide environments that enable the discussions on how the employer and employee can work together to find the right solution for them. 🌞

Last week I attended the SWIFT event on Allyship with Cordelia Osewa-Ediae FRSA and had a 💡 moment. I have never been completely comfortable using the term Allyship on the basis it can often be interpreted differently by different people. For me I use it when I think of the many male and female allies in my career who used their privilege to support me in the pursuit of my career 🙏. My light bulb moment came when Cordelia shared the two slides below which outlined the correlation between Allyship and Leadership. This gave me a much clearer understanding on what allyship means and how I can implement this as a framework in my own organisation. The second slide is about how we all need to use our privilege whatever that might be to support others through their career paths. Thanks again Cordelia 🥰for a really thought provoking and insightful session.

Swift is a WR programme aimed at bringing senior leaders across transport ✈️ 🚊🚌🚙 to address the key issues women from all backgrounds face, then working with key industry decision makers on how we can work together to address these issues. It also provides a great opportunity to meet other colleagues who face similar issues to you in the workplace and to have a safe environment to share experiences. To join please see the link below https://swift.womeninrail.org/1044-3/membership/   

Let me take the opportunity to thank Shamit Weinberger Gaiger OBE WR trustee who does an amazing job of running SWIFT on behalf of WR 👏👏👏👏🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌

Over the last two weeks we have continued to discuss the WR proposition for front line colleagues 🧕🏽👮🏻♀️. The feedback from our members and our trade union colleagues resulted in a commitment in our business plan to develop a proposition specifically for front line roles. We are continuing to do this in partner with GBRTT colleagues to combine our resources and efforts to better serve our front-line colleagues on gender issues in the workplace. On this topic it was great to meet with Rachael Riley  from RSK one of our corporate members 🙏. To hear RSKs feedback on how we can do more for front line colleagues. The session focussed on our mentoring programme and Rajinder Pryor MBE ( ਰਜਿੰਦਰ ਪ੍ਰਾਇਰ ਐਮ.ਬੀ.ਈ ) was able to share how our mentoring programme supports developing front line colleagues. After a great discussion there were many ideas on what more we can do #feedbackisagift. In Rajinder words “we will only create the change want to see across our industry by working together” so please keep your feedback coming [email protected]

In the last two weeks we had our Monthly Trustee Board and our monthly regional leaders meeting. I always get so much energy hearing from our regional leads on what they are doing to support our members 🤗. I encourage everyone to get involved in your local regional groups connect, network and have fun. 👩🏼🤝👩🏿👬👩🏾🤝👨🏼 🤩 On that note the Yorkshire regions summer social on the 15th July was a real success so well done 👏 to all the team involved in making that happen. There are two regional events coming up WR Scotland are running a workshop on Ascent and thanks to Edinburgh Trams Edinburgh Trams 🙏 for sponsoring the event Lorna Gibson and the Sikh and Punjab history stories form across rail online event on the 30th July sponsored by Transport for London and Multi faith connecting faith and belief 🙏 Our people - Network Rail

In our Board meeting we said goodbye and good luck to Philippa Hinton who is stepping down as trustee as she goes on maternity leave to have her second child 👶 🥰. I would like to thank Phillipa for all she has done for WR over the last two years and will be missed by us all ❤️. This has created an opportunity for WR to recruit for trustees. We have two positions and we would like one of these positions to be fulfilled by someone who is in a front line role today or has previously in the last few years. If this opportunity interests you please email [email protected] to register your interest and we will share the process for applying for this great opportunity to be part of delivering our mission “to be unapologetic in our pursuit of gender equity and across the rail industry”

Before I sign off I thought I would share a really interesting interview I listened too recently and would recommend. This extended version of the interview with Harriett Harmon (now in the House of Lords) focuses on her experience of being a feminist in a male dominated world. It shows the impact women can make when they’re represented and how far we still have to go: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0rwZb6OsjXYBB5JnArimCW

If you have holidays coming up please take the time to completely switch off and spend the time with loved ones.

M x 

Marie Daly

Shona Clive Terri Cave Angie Doll Darren O'Brien Gary Smithson Karen Paton Neil Robertson Philippa Hinton Rajinder Pryor MBE ( ਰਜਿੰਦਰ ਪ੍ਰਾਇਰ ਐਮ.ਬੀ.ਈ ) Shamit Weinberger Gaiger OBE Sharon Salmon MBE (she/her) Nicola McGuire Lorna Gibson Gemma Southgate Anna Wilson Sarah Birtles