Published on: Friday, 8 March 2024
Last updated: Friday, 8 March 2024
Greater Anglia is showing how it is supporting its female workforce as part of International Women’s Day 2024.
The train company, which runs trains between London and Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk, has a range of policies in place for its colleagues so they can thrive at work.
This includes a family-friendly policy with maternity and paternity leave, plus a domestic violence policy offering contact numbers for support organisations, along with counselling. Greater Anglia also delivers menopause cafés or webinars to help enhance available support networks.
The company makes sure that everyone has adequate rest built into their working roster, takes annual leave throughout the year, while also having flexible working and equal opportunities policies.
This International Women’s Day, Greater Anglia is taking the opportunity to showcase some of its women who have been nominated by colleagues for doing a sterling job in both helping others and taking the business forward.
Renata Sorokinaite (Operational Production Manager, Train Presentation) is said to always try and “listen to people with patience to solve problems, always helping to find a solution and always goes above for colleagues and team and is always available for assistance and guidance.”
Renata Sorokinaite (credit: Greater Anglia)
Keely Lopes (Head of Business Readiness) leads on many projects and is described as “a great motivator, always available if needed and always supporting and driving the team forward, you cannot help but be spurred on to do your best, as her attitude is infectious.”
Keely Lopes (credit: Greater Anglia)
The pair also talk about their careers and give further thoughts in an online blog.
At Greater Anglia, 30% of all women in the company are in management positions and latest staff polls from November 2023 show 78% of female respondents would recommend the company as a good place to work and that 75% are proud to work there.
The company will also hold a special event on International Women’s Day itself (Friday 8 March), inviting more than 50 women to outline how else it can support them, with sessions on everything from helping more women get into rail and leadership to having conversations to explore topical issues that impact mental health, including the menopause, fertility treatment, or miscarriage.
Katy Bucknell, Greater Anglia’s HR director, said:
“We have a huge number of talented women across our business, and you will find them doing everything from leading teams to driving trains and working in engineering roles.
“We appreciate all our colleagues all year round, but to give a special shout-out to celebrate some on International Women’s Day is very fitting.”
Over the past year, Greater Anglia has partnered with female-friendly job board Work180, displaying and promoting vacancies on its website and across social media, held career events at a number of shopping centres and job fayres and invited women to a female driver day taster session learning about the job.
The International Women’s Day event is part of Greater Anglia’s wider diversity and inclusion strategy, aimed at making the company a better place to work.