We recognise that our people drive our success and are vital in delivering value to our customers. Therefore continuing to support our people and build a culture in which they can thrive and develop has been a top priority in 2018-19.

Driven by Inland Rail, our staff numbers increased from around 1,300 to over 1,500 people.

FOCUSING ON TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

To deliver on our commitment to support our people, we created ARTC’s Our People strategy. The strategy is designed to strengthen leadership capability, performance and create an even more diverse and inclusive culture.

At the end of 2018, we completed our first round of safety-focused leadership development programs. We have now selected a partner to continue delivering these programs so that more people from our management team and senior leaders across all business areas can be developed over the coming year.

SUPPORTING AND BUILDING DIVERSITY

We made good progress in increasing the diversity of our workforce. In 2018-19:

• Females made up 26 percent of our workforce, up from 22 percent last year.
• Females continued to fill 25 percent of our leadership roles.
• We maintained our percentage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees at 2.4 percent despite our overall staff numbers growing.

We also continued as the foundation sponsor of the Wayfinder Initiative, which aims to build the pool of women in supply chain education, training, jobs and careers. This year, a Supply Chain Fundamentals Course was developed to provide women with the knowledge and confidence to consider and apply for new careers in supply chain and logistics.

In addition, we partnered with Diversity Inclusion to support the Thrive program, which supports people to transition from work to parenthood and back.

MANAGING INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

During the year, we successfully concluded negotiations for two infrastructure enterprise agreements:

• The Australian Rail Track Corporation (NSW) Infrastructure Maintenance Enterprise Agreement 2018
• The Australian Rail Track Corporation (Victoria) Infrastructure Maintenance Enterprise Agreement 2018.

We also started negotiations to replace the Australian Rail Track Corporation (NSW) Enterprise Agreement 2016 in April 2019.

PEOPLE KEY RESULTS

FOCUSING ON TECHNOLOGY TO SUPPORT BUSINESS GROWTH

The demand for rail freight is growing, and to ensure we can meet our current and future business needs, we focus on continually improving our systems and technology. In 2018-19, we established a Technology Investment Committee to provide additional oversight of these efforts. We also adjusted the structure of our Systems and Technology teams to improve the alignment of our technology investments with our business and establish a planning function with oversight across all workstreams.

We also progressed two key technology-focused initiatives – our digital strategy and our cyber security strategic plan.

DIGITAL STRATEGY

We started developing a five-year, holistic technology roadmap. This digital strategy – or ‘system of systems’ – will prioritise our investments to ensure our systems and technology are integrated and efficient. It will provide a framework to support and improve our business, allowing us to deliver better outcomes for our customers. In particular, the digital strategy will:

• Define our technology vision for the next five years
• Identify opportunities through defining the present and future capability, infrastructure and architecture needs
• Plan for the impacts of large-scale operational and technology changes
• Enhance our current systems and technology service delivery model, with an emphasis on the distinctions between core systems, business-led initiatives and innovation activities.

Individual initiatives under the strategy will be developed and assessed on their merits and supported by a specific business case before proceeding.

CYBER SECURITY STRATEGIC PLAN

We stepped up the implementation of our cyber security strategic plan, to ensure we have the capacity to manage the increasing cyber security risks associated from increased digitalisation, interconnectivity, and a changing and more sophisticated threat landscape.

Our main focus was on building organisational awareness of cyber security risks and implementing major changes to our systems to better protect our business. The plan will continue to be implemented over the coming four years.

TRANSFORMING PROCUREMENT

We continued to transform our procurement function and made progress towards delivering more efficient systems and processes that will allow us to best meet business and customer needs. We also planned ongoing staff development in procurement and inventory, with a focus on driving value for money, increasing security of supply, and reducing risk in the supply chain.

Optimising scale challenges presented by Inland Rail has been of particular interest and we will leverage economies of scale wherever possible across the company to ultimately benefit our customers. In constructing Inland Rail, we are also mindful of presenting opportunities for local and regional suppliers and indigenous organisations.