The RailStaff Awards 2024

Sophia Galligan

Great Western Railway

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Dominic Carey - **HAS LEFT**

Said the following about Sophia Galligan:

“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'.

Sophia is often the first person that new colleagues meaningfully engage with when starting their first day, as Sophia more often than not hosts our corporate inductions. At these, she takes great effort to inspire and empower from day one, passionately promoting and explaining our people centric operating ethos.

Sophia has been in her current training role just a little over two years. Just 12 months into her role she was awarded two Gold Awards in close succession (a company award given only to high performers for outstanding exemplar behaviour or action).

Previously Sophia worked as a Customer Host (on-train catering), and in just a short space of time has advanced her career significantly. As a substantive Lead Trainer Sophia manages other trainers and is directly involved in shaping the strategic development of GWR's customer facing training vision. Sophia works across the business via several project streams and colleague interest groups, such as Women in Rail to promote women's issues and her impact in the wider business is significant. Aside from directly being responsible for producing through her training approach, a new dynamic and empathetic breed of customer facing staff (I have sat in her training sessions and her enthusiastic vision for customer service excellence is truly infectious), Sophia working beyond her core role every day to empower others and inspire colleagues to find their own creative voice. In this Sophia embodies the very highest learning and development ideals, as Sophia often observes and rightly so, the role of a trainer is to empower others, and this should not just be restricted to the training room!

Sophia has achieved a great deal in such a short space of time, all of us wonder just how much she will achieve in the next 10 or so years, and none of us are in any doubt that should she wish it, her longer-term future will involve an executive level appointment in the rail industry.

Sophia is truly a future leader, and she has already demonstrated through her learning and development activity a level of inspirational capability that far exceeds the norm.

Sophia has quickly become a ‘go to’ person within the training team for advice. There has not been a day where Sophia has not shown a positive and inspirational approach to her work and with others. This is infectious and has had a positive effect on other team members. Sophia has raised morale within the team through her forward-thinking and creative mindset, focusing on the solution rather than the problem, listening and coaching others to help them succeed. It is clear that Sophia measures her success by the success of others, something that many long serving leaders fail to appreciate. As a trainer Sophia is passionate about delivering for others and meeting / exceeding standards. Sophia has shown this in her approach to delegates, tailoring her style to individual needs, offering additional time to support their development, and being available out of hours to answer questions and resolve any problems our colleagues face. Sophia constantly goes above and beyond, investing personal time to deliver for the team and her delegates.

Sophia regularly makes a difference outside of her normal duties, believing that she should live the behavioural ideals that she regularly encourages colleagues to display through her training activity. To put this into context, and provide an example, in one instance when she was following a customer who was running to toward the station to catch a train when he tripped and landed badly. Sophia helped the customer, worked with the station team, reported it and ensured the customer was well cared for. Sophia used her scarf to bandage to make a sling, took the customer to the hospital in her own car and sat with him until the initial tests were done. The customer had broken their elbow and needed to go for surgery. Sophia took care of his car at the station, arranging for the parking to be extend the parked. Sophia continued to respond to questions and concerns 24/7 until the customer was safely home.

Sophia has received many emails of praise from female trainees/delegates, mostly for her empathetic and encouraging support, and constantly receives high trainee/delegate satisfaction scores, for her inspirational approach and engagement. Sophia has influenced other members of the L&D team around many topics, including women's issues, through her boundless energy, positively, and drive to get things done!

Whenever Sophia is out on the network she delivers for our colleagues and customers, a dynamic and inspiring female role model. She is seen by female colleagues as an aspirational figure, and that is a major achievement as Sophia is still in the relatively stages of her career.

As a previous manager of Sophia has remarked:

“Sophia is a colleague that has passion for delivering for colleagues, customers, and our business. Sophia approaches every challenge with positivity and resilience, which enables her to succeed in every situation. Sophia is very people focused, however, Sophia is not shy in challenging others on their performance, recognising when someone needs to step up to deliver. Sophia does this by being clear, honest, and supportive. She uses coaching and clearly explains the reasons behind her challenge. Sophia is someone who deserves to be recognised as an emerging leader, who is already setting an aspirational standard for others to follow.”“