The RailStaff Awards 2024

Elaine Gill

Great Western Railway

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Nominations for Rail Person of the Year

Dominic Carey - **HAS LEFT**

Said the following about Elaine Gill:

“Elaine’s primary role is the Team Leader in the TSSO in Plymouth, yet in addition to this Elaine looks after the rostering of station colleagues in west stations, always finding new way to support the Station Management team and improve communications with the teams on the ground.

You would think that having one job was enough, but not for Elaine who has developed a rostering strategy and has gradually added more SM areas to her responsibilities voluntarily. She now oversees the work of over 220 colleagues.

Elaine’s rostering skills ensure that the correct colleagues are placed at the right stations in the right roles, providing us with dispatchers for safe timely departure of services, Customer Ambassadors, gateline assistants and various other station related roles, so we can meet our KPI’s as managers.

That’s 220 colleagues that Elaine has developed relationships with, understanding their needs and limitations, helping and advising them when things go wrong. Looking at alternative cover, swaps, granting leave, to name but a few actions, all of which collectively ensures that the performance of our station teams keeps to the highest of standards. Elaine works tirelessly to keep on top of it all, no matter what the time or day of the week. She is the quiet resilient powerhouse that keeps the management team supported.

Elaine is always keeping a close eye on what’s going on and regularly sorts issues that occur out of hours and at weekends, making her the “go-to” person for us all. These developed relationship and positive attitude recently made the difference between a station running with just two colleagues (after many where required to isolate) and actually having five colleagues allowing for the smooth running of station operation and performance of the station to be maintained at a good standard.

Elaine is always seeking to improve and develop her skills and likes to challenge herself, qualities that have seen Elaine take on even more responsibility by co-ordinating and developing a group of Peer Trainers at Plymouth to deliver the Business and Safety briefings across the west station region. Elaine has successfully delivered 100% completion for colleague briefings, supporting the peer trainers making sure that they have the briefing material, attend the ‘brief the briefer’, have venues to deliver the brief and rosters colleagues to attend by engaging them in the process too. Always ready to rise to the challenge, Elaine will co-ordinate and manage colleague attendance for ad-hoc briefings required by the business, more recently with the impact of the pandemic, Elaine has ensured that all colleagues have the time and the information needed to complete the online S&B briefing, security briefing; COSHH and many more. The high level of performance on S&B and course attendance has always been in a timely and highly organised manner and this is down to Elaine.

Elaine has to liaise regularly with many “bosses”, ASMs, SMs, RSM, Competence Managers; Finance Managers; Retail Managers – on top of the 220 colleagues that can have quite a few demands themselves, that’s quite a feat! Yet Elaine manages to communicate at many different levels with confidence, empathy and with focus on solving the problem, all in her own unique style.

The support that Elaine provides to the management team is invaluable, not just with all the above, but the information that is gathered and presented back is always of a high standard. Elaine recognised the importance of KPI’s for managers and so developed a range of regular reports that tracked briefing completion and monitored overtime and leave.

Elaine’s role allows a number of station performance KPI’s to be met. From schedule 17 to delays, briefings to course attendance, cost effective roster to monitoring annual leave, Elaine’s role in all of these ensure the best outcome for all. Elaine consistently delivers above and beyond her core role to provide the support needed by managers and colleagues alike.

It takes a special person to juggle all of this and Elaine manages to do it every day and is the glue that keeps it all together. She is truly amazing and deserves to be recognised for being such an outstanding rail role model for others to emulate.“