Stagecoach is celebrating its female talent today (8 March) in support of International Women’s Day 2022.
Women@Stagecoach, one of a variety of employee networks set up by the operator last year, released its first podcast today.
In West Scotland, the team runs an all-female driver bus route in Ayrshire today to promote career opportunities for women within the bus industry and women’s progress in conquering traditionally male-dominated professions.
Stagecoach launched its Women@Stagecoach employee network with the aim of men and women working together to promote and support women and equality in the business, promote a diverse working environment and to give women a voice to share their concerns and issues that particularly impact women.
Stagecoach is also celebrating its success in female recruitment with an 18% increase in female driver applications compared to last year. In addition, over a third of females are highlighted as successors within the business who have been nominated as top talent to join its internal development programme ‘Shine Pool’.
The new employee networks are a key part of Stagecoach’s overall objective set out in its sustainability strategy, which has an objective of achieving 40% of women in leadership roles by 2024.
Carla Stockton-Jones, UK Managing Director for Stagecoach is the first woman to lead a major transport operator in the UK.
She says: “I am extremely proud of the work our people and employee networks are doing to make important changes in our business. Our employee networks help raise awareness of many issues and this awareness starts conversations which leads to self-awareness and then ultimately change.
“International Women’s Day continues to be an important platform for starting these conversations and with this year’s theme being #breakthebias it allows men to join the conversation and become advocates which is equally as important.
“Our targets for diversity are ambitious but realistic and we are making great progress to meeting them by 2024.”
