The RailStaff Awards 2024

Jean Cook

Great Western Railway

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Nominations for Rail Person of the Year

Dominic Carey - **HAS LEFT**

Said the following about Jean Cook:

“Great Western Railway (GWR) is one of the biggest rail franchises in the UK, part of the First Group of companies, operating the Western network since 1996, rebranding ourselves as GWR in 2015. We employ over 6000 people across our network and we carry more than one and a half million customers over two million single journeys on 10,000 services every week. People are at the heart of our business and our ethos is that we are 'greater together'.

Jean Cook exemplifies our values and sets an exemplar standard for others to follow. She joined our company in May 2014 and has worked for us as a Depot Administrator since that time.

Jean is the lead administrator in Bristol and continually delivers an exceptionally high standard of service to the 500 plus colleagues based there. Jean enjoys her core role, but has also continued to look for further challenges in the interests she is passionate about. These often take Jean beyond her normal day to day work involving large amounts of her own time, including projects, attendance at meetings, working groups and mentoring of others.

Jean juggles so many extra responsibilities outside of her core role, championing the inclusion and diversity agenda, and she chairs GWR’s Inclusion Action Group. Jean is also significantly involved in the Speaker of The House’s (John Bercow MP) BAME Challenge. Together with representatives from 50 other companies, Jean helps to develop and produce the BAME Online Toolkit to give UK employers practical support and guidance on how to attract, develop and retain BAME colleagues. She is particularly committed to furthering the interests of BAME females in the industry and works closely with GWR Women in Rail group to coordinate efforts.

Jean has been recognised so far this year internally by both GWR and First Group (to which GWR belongs as a First Group company), at two prestigious awards ceremonies, GWR’s Excellence Awards and First Group’s BeFirst Awards, both of which form the highest form of recognition that either company offers to its employees. At the Excellence Awards Jean was the inaugural winner of the company’s new Inclusion & Diversity Award, in recognition of her work promoting the interests and needs of BAME women in rail and women in rail in general. At the BeFirst Awards she beat a range of high calibre candidates across First Group to be named Colleague of the Year for the whole of UK group, for the same achievement, promoting the interests of women and BAME. This double win is unheard of and marks Jean out as an industry leader where the promotion of minority interests is concerned.

Jean has also secured shortlisting externally, for a highly prestigious award, with the Finalist announcement due to be made public very shortly by the awarding body.

Jean as Chair of Inclusion Action Group working alongside colleagues to set the strategy and governance for the group that will feed back in to the Exec. She also recently obtained sponsorship to complete the Level 6 CMI Certification in Equality and Inclusion in Leadership.

Jean was also one of the first and foremost authors of GWR’s new Inclusion & Diversity Strategy (which was officially launched earlier this year), working with a group of other front-line colleagues to define what this new strategy would focus on, directly influencing the senior leadership team’s priorities looking ahead.

Jean helped launch GWR Women In Rail in the 3 GWR regions and is a member of the GWR National Speaking Group. She has supported launches of WiR outside of our network and has performed as a Guest Speaker on women’s interests.

Jean works as a mentor with pupils at Colston Girls School, developing young women’s skills to better prepare them for employment in the future. She continues to work with the school to coach and develop these young people, helping to build their confidence and encourage them to successful start careers in traditionally male industries like rail.

She is an inspiration not just to our company, but the rail industry as a whole, as she embodies through her ongoing efforts what the diversity agenda is all about. Through her work she has helped GWR to better meet its aspirations to attract and retain more BAME and female employees. Her work continues to directly contribute to our ongoing success at sustaining IIP Gold.

Jean is very much recognised by her colleagues as inspiration and a force for positive change, as her own manager has observed:

“Jean is recognised by professional HR colleagues in GWR as being an energetic game changer, and she is seen as someone who has been integral to the setting up new colleague interest groups and providing existing working groups with guidance as to how they can be more inclusive and effective. Jean is one of GWR’s most influential champions of Inclusion & Diversity.”

Jean embodies everything that we look for in an employee. Jean is not only excellent in her main role, she works beyond this to make a massive difference to the lives of those around her, acting as an agent for positive change.

Her approach to her work, serves as an example to others, of what is possible and what can be achieved if you have heart, passion and a belief in yourself.

Jean is incredibly inspiring to others, and I can think of nobody more deserving to be recognised as the Rail Person of the Year!“