Recruitment
“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'.
Sarah is an incredibly enthusiastic individual who not only excels in her role as a Customer Ambassador, but is continually looking a new ideas to improve the Customer Experience at stations and involve local communities wherever possible.
She has initiated a number of projects off her own back and gone out of her way to support the newly formed Gloucestershire Community Rail Partnership as well as a variety of other community and adoption groups along the South Cotswold line.
Sarah initiated talks with Cheltenham Camera Club earlier in 2021, with a view to creating a display of photographs in the waiting room at Cheltenham Spa. The waiting room itself was in need of repainting and Sarah gave up her own time to undertake this, gathering support from other station staff. The culmination of her efforts was an official opening of the waiting room in October 2021 by the Mayor of Cheltenham.
She approached the local photography group to help make the new space extra special for customers and celebrate the local community, and they were delighted to be able to share their work with the travelling public. Sarah has subsequently been working on creating a similar display in the waiting room on the other platform. It is Sarah's aim to rotate the photographs on a regular basis and potentially create similar display opportunities at other stations along the line.
She has encouraged and supported other station staff with their idea of creating a colourful community garden and train planter on Platform 1 at Cheltenham Spa - this has provided a lovely area for customers and staff to enjoy whilst at the station.
Sarah is now proactively helping Cheltenham Council engage with local community groups to gather wider support in mainiting the garden areas around the station. GCRP recruited their first Community Rail Partnership Officer this year and Sarah took the time to introduce herself to the new recruit and show her the local stations, pointing out the various community initiatives along the route. This made a great difference to the new colleague (who was new to the railway environment) and enabled her to integrate herself into her new role quickly and effectively.
Following on from her success in developing the waiting rooms at Cheltenham, Sarah worked with GCRP to create a dedicated new station gallery and photographic display at Gloucester station, showcasing photographs taken by local people during lockdown. Sarah worked closely with the contractors to ensure the build resulted in an optimal outcome.
Despite unexpected challenges Sarah has always available to support and guide the community groups to get through the hurdles. At Stroud station, she has been instrumental in helping create a room to showcase the history of the town and canal waterways in conjunction with the adoption group Creative Sustainability. This will also house information for customers on cycle routes and ongoing travel facilities. Edible Stroud is community organisation who have created 3 raised plant beds in the unused sidings at the station with a view to growing vegetables for the local community. This is an ongoing project which Sarah has encouraged and supported from the start. She has gone out of her way on numerous occasions to be at Stroud station when the group needed support.
More recently Sarah has been working with Cheltenham Twinning Society to connect the station with those stations in other countries with whom Cheltenham has a Twinning Link - Sochi, Russia, Annecy - France, Kisumu - Kenya, Weihai - China, Gottingen - Germany, Cheltenham - USA. The idea is to open a dialogue with international stations to share best practice and friendship across the seas. It is hoped in due course to create Murals relating to Cheltenham's Twin Towns and put these up on the wall above the Community Garden at the station.
Sarah 's support for all these initiatives is truly amazing. Despite being the only Customer Ambassador on this line of route and having a challenging core workload, she delivers excellently in her day job and still finds the time to deliver as much again more broadly. She demonstrates all the GWR values and her involvement in the projects has made a great difference to their success.
She is always heavily involved in the Cheltenham Races and during the last Race meeting had to deal with an extremely unfortunate accident at the station right at the end of her shift/and the races themselves. Her friendly and hospitable approach always makes everyone feel relaxed and welcome. She is the South Cotswold conduit for innovation and ideas via which both local Community groups and rail passengers have benefitted.
In the words of the GCRP, ' Sarah is a beacon of enthusiasm and support'.“
“Thank you so much for inviting us to the Awards and for doing the raffle for Railway Children. We were absolutely delighted with the amount that was raised and it was great having the opportunity to promote our Great Rail Challenge. It certainly seemed to be a fantastically well organised event and well done to you. We really appreciated all the help we got from you. We get so much support from you all at RailStaff and I hope you are now enjoying a very well deserved rest!”
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