Network Rail has been announced as the winner of this year’s Recruitment Industry Disability Initiative’s Disability Confident award.

The awards celebrate the best of disability confident recruitment, with the results being announced on 3 December, the International Day of Disabled People. The judging panel comprises disability experts and senior industry leaders.

Winning the award shows Network Rail‘s commitment to becoming a more diverse and inclusive employer for all. The panel commended the company for its five-year diversity and inclusion strategy “Everyone Matters”, and for the Disability Matters workstream that is part of the strategy.

The strategy was planned and developed with input from disabled colleagues and the disabled employee network CanDo, and was published in 2019.

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Disability Matters has provided fresh opportunities for employees to meet and ask questions about disabilities whilst working from home, such as through focus groups and interactive webinars. It has also resulted in an update to Network Rail’s reasonable adjustments guidance for employees and their line managers.

Network Rail chief executive Andrew Haines, and chair Sir Peter Hendy CBE, have both pledged to increase the number of disabled employees, after figures showed that less than 3% of their 44,000-strong workforce have shared that they are disabled or long-term health condition.

Loraine Martins OBE, Network Rail’s director of diversity and inclusion, said: “I am delighted that we have won this Disability Confident Award. Becoming a more diverse and inclusive employer is vital for us, and this award signals that we are on the right track.

“I would like to thank all colleagues involved in making Network Rail a better place to work. We will continue to make progress through our Disability Matters initiative and through working with our CanDo employee network. This is great recognition, and we know that we still have much more to accomplish.”