MATTHEW BROMLEY, INNOVATION AND BUSINESS EXCELLENCE MANAGER, ARRIVA RAIL LONDON, EXPLAINS HOW THE TOC IS USING INNOVATIVE THINKING TO IMPROVE PERFORMANCE
One of Arriva Rail London’s aims is to be the most innovative train operator in the UK. To help us achieve this, we have developed a Joint Innovation Strategy in partnership with our client, Rail for London (RfL), to ensure we have a structured approach to delivering innovation and that our innovation funding and time is focused on the areas of greatest need.
A small annual budget has been set aside to invest in seed funding pilot projects, research and development and to support the implementation of employee suggestions. In fact, many of our most successful projects have originated from employee suggestions, and to make it easier and more fun for employees to innovate we are in the process of developing our own ‘innovation portal’ in partnership with Arriva Group IT. In practice we have found the challenge and the solution to it rarely exist in the head of the same person, so to promote a collaborative approach to problem solving we have established a cross-functional Innovation Panel that meets every month to share best practice and develop solut…
