We want ARTC to be a great place to work and a great company for customers to do business with, so investing in our people and our systems was a key priority throughout the year.

OUR PEOPLE

To support our teams while continuing to attract new people with additional skills and competencies, we further developed and implemented our People Strategy in 2019-20.

This enabled us to grow our teams and strengthen our leadership capability, while at the same time fostering an engaging and inclusive environment to reflect our increasingly diverse workforce.

Significantly, our employee numbers rose from 1,557 in 2018-19 to 1,810 by the end of 2019-20.

Investing in our people now and into the future

There is high demand for skilled workers in the construction and infrastructure industry nationally. ARTC continued to invest in building a sustainable capability pipeline by:

• Developed a Core Capability Framework which will underpin the employee lifecycle and serve as the foundation for other People Strategy initiatives in coming years.
• On the back of a review of compliance and technical training across ARTC, we increased capability and capacity to better support improvements through our Safe Work Improvement Program.
• The first stage of refreshing signalling competencies has been achieved, which is important for building a pipeline of signallers for now and into the future.
• A new approach to performance planning was piloted – the Contribution Framework – which involved top senior leaders across the business.
• Developing the Remuneration Banding Framework and related practices to enable controlled and appropriate responses to market pressures in the attraction and retention of business-critical talent.
• Diploma and Certificate IV accredited programs in Frontline Leadership were extended across our Hunter Valley and Interstate networks.
• A package of online resources for “leading through disruption” was released to all people managers as part of the COVID-19 pandemic response to support leaders navigate the challenges faced by our workforce.
• Initiated pilots of new 360-degree feedback tools for leaders to build self-awareness and baseline their leadership capability.

Diversity in the workplace

As part of developing an engaged and inclusive culture, ARTC continues to pursue greater diversity and gender balance in the workplace. This year:

• Female employees made up 28.5% of our workforce – up from 26% in 2018-19
• Females made up 36.8% of our leadership – up from 25% in 2018-19
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees represented 2.4% of our workforce, which has remained static since 2018-19

Significantly, we improved our reporting this year to enable deeper insights into diversity and gender balance across our workforce.

Industrial relations

During the year, we successfully concluded negotiations to replace the Australian Rail Track Corporation (NSW) Enterprise Agreement 2016 with the Australian Rail Track Corporation New South Wales (NSW) Enterprise Agreement 2019, which was approved in June 2020.

We also commenced negotiations to replace the Australian Rail Track Corporation Enterprise Agreement 2017.

Key results – People