People Strategy Board

Chair: Andrew Meadows
RDG Lead: Leila Rahimzadeh

Purpose

The People Strategy Board vision is to develop a strategic approach to the significant HR issues facing rail in the next decade, such as, skills shortages, reducing employment costs, the proactive management of industrial relations, and improving the attractiveness of employment in rail to potential new employees.

Strategic priorities

The strategic priorities of the Board are as follows:

Skills

• The industry has the right numbers of competent personnel, in the right place, at the right price with the right attitudes and skills, now and in the future.
• The current and future skills gap for railway specific personnel with focus on train drivers (other railway specific personnel include: certain engineers, operations planners, front line managers, graduates and future leaders) is quantified and closed.
• The industry understands labour demand in sufficient detail to differentiate between whole industry and individual member activity, applying central control to whole industry matters only

Employment costs and employee relations

• The industry has a clear and agreed strategy for tackling the cost of employment of all personnel and its labour costs are not perceived by industry members, stakeholders and funders as disproportionately high.
• There is an optimum balance between Employer right to manage and Trade Union influence, which delivers a positive employment relations environment.

Industry promotion

• When competing for labour, the industry is able to secure the required resources as the labour market considers the rail industry a preferred choice.

Principles

The People Strategy Board will also abide with the following principle:

• It is clear what should and shouldn’t be governed centrally and whole industry activity is considered effective and supportive of individual member activity.

The strategic priorities have been turned into an action plan that will be managed by the Board.