Rupert Atterbury Thomas, Communications Manager, Southeastern Railway
Category
  • Future of Work
The Project

Rupert leveraged the enterprise social software Socialtext to address a clear lack of sharing and visibility of the information being provided – hampering response times and customer satisfaction. The endeavor, branded Workmate, has done a great job of connecting employees with colleagues, as well as sharing knowledge within. 

The Technology

Socialtext

Metrics Matter

In comparison to the previous intranet that was being used by Southeastern, Workmate saw a 9,693 per cent increase in comparison. As far as people viewing the platform and contacts, there was a 51,479 percent increase. This dramatically increases response times to issues in the field due to the significant increase in connectivity across the entire Southeastern network.

Disruptive Factor

Southeastern Railway is the only passenger train service that leverages social software like Socialtext to provide real-time train status information across the entire workforce. Leveraging pre-existing familiarity with social networks required little training to be successful in implementation. Bringing a social layer into the network has now become an integral part of our entire day to day processes. 

Shining Moment

What started out as a clear communications problem from train operators to field operations managers, resulted in a clear cut resolution with the Workmate platform. This was quantified with the pilot program showing significantly positive results for all workers alike. The best success is the clear difference that our customers can see in train timeliness and quicker response times in the face of route disruptions. 

 

ABOUT Southeastern Railway

Southeastern Railway launched the UK's first high-speed domestic train service, and runs train services into London from Kent and East Sussex. We employee 3,500 people, serve 179 stations, cover 1,094 miles of railway infrastructure, operate 2,000 train services a day, and carry 570,000 passengers every weekday.

Southeastern is owned by Govia, a joint venture between the Go-Ahead Group (65 per cent) and Keolis (35 per cent).