Trainline’s purpose is to empower greener travel choices connecting people and places. We achieve this by removing barriers and creating strong connections for our customers and partners.
Our approach to diversity, inclusion, and belonging follows the same principles. Removing barriers and creating connections results in an inclusive environment where every Trainliner can be their true self, and a workplace where everyone belongs, is celebrated and their differences are valued, creating an awesome employee and customer experience.
As a technology business operating in the world of rail, we face the challenge of a limited pool of female candidates, particularly when hiring within our engineering and data teams. To tackle this – not just at Trainline but across the wider tech industry - we’ve done a lot of work with our partners on the issue of women in tech over the last few years. This involves supporting grassroots charitable organisations focused on helping younger females enter the industry, as well as working directly with schools on mentoring students from difficult backgrounds to help them see that a career in tech is within their grasp.
Progress in the last year includes:
However, while progress is being made, we recognise that there is still much to do. Many of the new female team members we’ve welcomed over the last year have filled roles outside of our technology and data teams and within other functions at Trainline. Their careers at Trainline will grow as we invest in their development and we’re excited to see the great things they will achieve. However, for now, many of these roles do not sit in the upper salary quartiles and as a result, we have seen our mean gender pay gap* increase from 26% in April 2020 to 30% in April 2021.
The widening of the gap is mainly attributed to the demographics within our technology and data functions. These functions represent two-thirds of our workforce and attract a higher proportion of male employees and the salary levels within these teams tend to be higher than other functions.
We continue to reassess and improve the recruitment processes we use, to make it even easier for young female tech talent to join us. We’ve seen good results from these processes so far, as the number of women at Trainline continues to grow. In the last year, this number has increased from 35% to 37%. In addition, we’ve increased the number of females hired to 39% during this reporting period, with the number growing to 43% at the end of 2021. We’re incredibly proud that these hires include our first-ever female Chief Technology Officer, Milena Nikolic.
We will continue to review and adapt our strategy to tackle gender imbalance. As well as continuing to support and mentor women in more junior roles at our company, we’ll make sure we’re laser-focused on getting the best senior female tech talent through our doors.
We will continue to review our plan to reduce our gender pay gap on a quarterly basis and our hiring plans monthly, at the executive level, working closely with Jenny Duvalier, our Non-Executive Director tasked with overseeing diversity & inclusion, within a wider remit of the workforce engagement. We’re also launching a new Diversity & Inclusion Action Plan to facilitate an even more inclusive and representative culture that attracts people from all backgrounds and where all Trainliners can thrive and feel like they belong.
We know that we have a responsibility to continue to support women in the wider tech industry and a role to play in ensuring females of all ages and backgrounds have access to a career in tech. For this reason, we support a number of charitable organisations, including:
*The difference between the average mean hourly pay of women and the average mean hourly pay of men at Trainline