Fair Cultures is proud to partner with Eurail in their journey to create a more inclusive and equitable workplace. Eurail, known for connecting travelers across Europe, is now also committed to connecting their workforce in a way that embraces diversity and inclusion. Through our collaboration, we've contributing to Eurail advancement in its D&I journey, aligning its people practices with the same sense of openness that defines its customer experience.
Eurail’s People and Culture team has taken important strides—from conducting comprehensive DEIB audits with Fair Cultures to building transparency around career growth and implementing inclusive leadership training. As Eurail moves through the integration phase of their DEIB maturity, Fair Cultures has been a trusted partner, providing guidance and support to foster an environment where every employee is valued.
Our joint initiatives extend beyond policies. Together, we’re going “one stop further” to transform not just work environments, but the communities and travelers Eurail serves across Europe.
Delve below in a purposeful conversation with Sarah Crane, Employee Experience Manager, and Christos Christopoulos, Talent Acquisition Specialist, around Eurail mission to rewrite its internal narrative to ensure a genuinely inclusive future for everyone involved.
Our team is also wishing good luck to Eurail team on November 26th, as a finalist for Organisational Culture at the Engage Awards 2024! This is UK’s only Awards programme celebrating achievements across customer, employee, sales and marketing engagement. According to organisers and judges, this year’s entries were of the highest standard to date.
How is inclusion a key pillar in growing the organisation?
We see in recent years a global movement where people are (re)assessing their personal and professional values, seeking greater autonomy and a deeper sense of community. This shift was the catalyst for us to stop and think, to not just keep pace with this changing landscape, but to exceed expectations. We are therefore consciously moving towards being more purpose-driven as a company. This pivot reflects our commitment to authentically embody and communicate the value we deliver to our customers.
Within our People and Culture team, this translates to continually working to recognise the individual journeys our colleagues go through so we can offer the safest and most inclusive environment where everyone feels valued and understood. Only then we see our people being empowered to do their best work and engaged with Eurail’s purpose.
How has diversity and inclusion shaped your company ecosystem and services?
We are in the infancy of our DEIB journey, moving towards the ‘integration’ phase (we measure according to the Five Stages of Maturity model), however, we recognise progress over the last 18 months. Our starting point was perhaps different to the average, as for a small-sized organisation (small but mighty!) we already, organically, attracted a diverse workforce from all corners of the globe. However, remaining humble, we knew then as we do now, that we always have work to do.
Since auditing what we were doing well, and where we could do better, we’ve been working to realise five key objectives over the past year that are complementary in providing a more inclusive employee experience.
For example, the initial audit taught us that our people need more transparency around career pathing, growth opportunities and pay and promotion principles. So we’ve recently worked to develop our approaches to performance management alongside promoting a feedback culture, to ensure all colleagues can contribute equally. We’ve found that maintaining a continuous employee listening programme is important to curtail any assumptions and effectively hear our people.
But it’s not solely about shaping infrastructure aligned to employee needs, it’s richer than this and covers how we work, embedding DEIB into the very fabric of our organisation. And that’s where we want to go next.
How did our organisations collaborate to enhance DEI within Eurail?
The initial DEIB audit was conducted by Fair Cultures and we found it useful to draw upon industry best practice to understand our positioning. We were pleasantly surprised to already be situated in the ‘tactical’ phase of the maturity model, which recognises existing efforts to adapt service level and offer to employee need. Nevertheless, we were even more interested in receiving recommendations for improving. Based on these findings, we’ve been working this year to develop learning and development programmes for our people managers and leadership team and to educate hiring managers on inclusive processes designed to enhance a sense of inclusion and equity.
What are some of the significant challenges Eurail has faced in implementing DEI practices, and how have our joint efforts addressed these challenges?
As a People and Culture team leading the change for DEIB across Eurail (with leadership support and sponsorship) we’re chiefly focused on the needs of our people, and we’re mindful of incorporating best practice. We therefore find it helpful that Fair Cultures teams is just a phone call away when we need to draw upon DEIB expertise. Most recently, we tapped into this when re-designing our employee handbook aligned to our employee journey. Fair Cultures team helped us to hone our inclusive language and approach as well as ensure compliance to Dutch labour law. Another challenge we encountered was the misunderstanding of specific terminology including the different components of DEIB. We are now working to develop a common language that is accessible to all and specific to our company purpose and way of working.
How is Eurail engaging with diverse communities across Europe to ensure that the benefits of train travel and cultural exploration are accessible to all?
For more than 65 years, we’ve offered travellers from all over the world, the opportunity to experience flexible, borderless train travel across Europe. Working in partnership with 35 European railway and ferry companies, we empower travellers to go where they want, when they want. We see Europe’s diversity as the backdrop for personal transformation, which is why we believe that travel has the potential to change hearts and minds, shape perspectives and create long-lasting impressions.
We focus on creating memorable and engaging experiences for our customers, where every interaction with them is a highlight. Similarly to our internal approach to DEIB (after all, EX = CX), we try to offer a personalised approach to customer experience where our travellers feel equally as valued and understood. An example would be the work our product teams are doing currently to ensure our digital Pass is fully accessible for neurodiverse needs.
What are you looking forward to?
We are ambitious but also pragmatic as we move to the beginning of the integrated phase of the DEIB maturity model where our strategy is fully defined, as is our culture of inclusion. We’ll shortly conduct our annual DEIB audit, in tandem with Fair Cultures, to uncover where we are now and what our focus should be. We have some idea already that we want to develop a long-term educational awareness programme for the whole team, and also an ERG/ambassador programme. We’re excited to continue our DEIB journey and go one stop further at every stage.
Very commendable well done.