Alan Godding

Said the following about Rose Merchant:

“Rose has made a significant impact in the short time she’s been at Greater Anglia (GA) after joining in November 2022 on a fixed-term contract. New to the industry and in a relatively new role for GA, which has a very large remit, Rose has responsibility for talent attraction. She has shown she’s not afraid to experiment, is innovative in her ideas, and has a real determination to challenge the status quo to encourage talented people from under-represented communities to apply for GA positions. She has a real passion for her role and goes above-and-beyond her remit. She really does deserve to win this award.

Undaunted, Rose wasted no time in collaborating with a variety of organisations and reaching out to disadvantaged and under-represented communities within the GA network. An example was taking GA ‘on the road’ by visiting shopping centres in under-represented communities. This initiative challenged previous held beliefs these communities would come to us. Rose promoted these events on our GA website: https://www.greateranglia.co.uk/about-us/news-desk/news-articles/greater-anglia-host-recruitment-shopping-centre-roadshows.

Rose single-handedly organised and coordinated three attraction campaigns in shopping centres located in Hackney, Bishops Stortford, and Southend. She worked with the shopping centres to negotiate pitches and arrange for delivery of attraction materials. She spoke to female train drivers and local station colleagues to encourage their participation at the campaigns to answer shopper’s queries and share experience of various roles.

Challenges included identifying the most suitable shopping centres to maximise reach, finding suitable locations within the shopping centres with high footfall, and creating innovative initiatives to encourage engagement. These were overcome by extensive research, collaborating with GA’s marketing department, and Atomic design agency.

Innovative ideas included giveaway polaroid photos of shoppers in ‘picture yourself at GA’, a cardboard train youngsters could sit in to feel like a real train driver, and free chocolate bars with QR codes directing shoppers to sign up to GA job alerts. She encouraged colleagues attending to bring their laptops so shoppers could receive assistance in signing up to GA job alerts recognising many shoppers may not have access to computer equipment.

During the campaign, Rose helped dispel some myths shoppers had about age and gender for engineering and train driver roles. The three days saw 250 flyers distributed to enquirers at the events (58% were female and 44% from an ethnic background). 73% of these resulted in further inquiries. For a first-time event the results far exceeded expectations and introduced a new method of targeting GA’s under-represented communities.

Rose actively participated in her own time to attend the Rail Unites For Inclusion Pride networking event at St. James Park. Few Train Operating Companies participated and the Department for Transport recognised Greater Anglia’s presence in the event.“