The RailStaff Awards 2024

Siobhan Ritchie

Said the following about Lydia Fairman:

“Lydia Fairman is exactly the type of HR professional our industry needs. Lydia is a dynamic thought leader, whose ideas and vision will ensure that those outside of our industry will be engaged with, and enticed by, a career in rail.

Although Lydia has recruited experienced hires for our industry in at moments over previous years, Lydia has only been with Network Rail directly for just under two years. In this small space of time within the sector, Lydia has made a big impact!

Lydia, has produced an industry wide people strategy for the Digital Railway, led on our organisation’s presence at The Big Bang, and has personally represented us a speaker at WISE conference in this last year.

Lydia has engaged with schools and with STEM, constantly recruiting STEM ambassadors across our organisation to champion careers in rail. Lydia is constantly pushing the boundaries to represent rail in a different way, so that we can appeal to different people, and showcase the variety of career options within our fantastic industry.

Lydia is always seeking opportunities to collaborate across rail organisations, and is great colleague to many people from rail governing bodies, to TOCs.

Lydia is passionate about how we should go about advancing our agenda to ensure skills and capability for future, and this passion is evidently infectious. Lydia manages a modest, but highly engaged and hardworking team who deliver against her vision for rail capability and development.

Lydia is also the scheme manager for our HR graduates, and is committed to ensuring that they are setup for success as HR professionals.

With a huge delivery plan, Lydia also somehow manages to be a caring and empathetic colleague, who is enthusiastic and hardworking, with a witty and dry sense of humour.

All this and more, means that Lydia is a pleasure to work with.“