Case studies

Network Rail

Network Rail

Systemic workplace culture change at Network Rail (Southern Region)

Overview

Network Rail (Southern Region) manage over 7,000 trains daily, representing over a third of Britain’s rail services. They operate major stations such as Waterloo, Clapham Junction, London Bridge, Charing Cross, and maintain an extensive infrastructure, including 3,300 miles of track, nearly 5,000 bridges, 895 level crossings, and approximately 8,000 railway signals.

Evolving the workplace culture with a focus on safety concerns and pandemic impact:

  • Despite safety investments, safety incidents persisted, raising concerns about organisational culture
  • COVID-19 brought fundamental changes in working, financial constraints, and shifting service expectations
  • Geographically dispersed workforce added complexity to implementing change
Network Rail logo

Our approach

We applied our award-winning 3-stage culture change methodology as a foundation. We tailored the methodology to the client’s needs throughout the process to ensure we could deliver a unique future-proof culture for Network Rail (SR).

Insight

Understanding & assessing the existing culture, challenges & opportunities

  • Developed a Bespoke Culture Assessment including a safety culture questionnaire for employees focusing on health, safety & employee wellbeing, service excellence, values & behaviours, and employee experience
  • Conducted 65 listening sessions yielding 7,625 insights, identifying culture enablers, inhibitors, and strategic imperatives
  • Presented results to the Executive team, highlighting red flags, safety concerns, and strategic priorities

Design

Designing the future culture

  • Developed 3 cultural principles: Show you care; Keep it simple; Listen, learn and improve
  • Simplified strategic priorities to four key ambitions: Safety, People, Performance/Service, Financials
  • Created a streamlined culture narrative and imagery for communication
  • Designed cultural immersion events for senior leaders, using an ‘Event in a Box’ approach for wider engagement
  • Established key lead indicator metrics to track the culture journey over time

Embed

Embedding a culture of safety and making that new culture stick

  • Created a team review and planning workbook for managers to implement changes to ways of working
  • Established an overall culture change roadmap and program team
  • Aligned strategic initiatives with culture principles for holistic change
  • Provided support in mentoring, internal communications, employee brand development, and change leadership training
  • ‘Assured’ leadership development and frontline safety behavioural programs fully integrated the culture principles

Results

Colleague engagement remained stable despite challenges

  • Teams actively developing cultural plans and establishing continuous agile change forums
  • Introduced a toolkit for managers to grow culture within their teams effectively
  • Redesigned employee lifecycle to align with cultural aspirations
  • Performance management now centres around the culture principles

What the clients said

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