Career Pathways in the Australasian Rail Industry

The literature suggests that explicit career paths and their related qualifications, learning and development and competency levels benefit organisations and individuals and contribute to the attraction, retention, development and engagement within an organisation or industry. Whilst all rail organisations provide training to their staff, and some may have developed some pieces of the career pathways puzzle, for example position descriptions, training programs and in some instances some career pathway information, there is no consolidated career pathway information for the whole industry. 

Greater co‐ordination between rail organisations regarding explicit career paths and related learning and development would benefit all rail organisations from the perspective of attraction and retention of staff.

This project therefore sets out to scope what it would take to better understand develop and clearly document career pathways for the rail industry. The scoping project will identify work already done in areas relevant to career pathways. It will also identify gaps in career path development and associated learning and development. This work will encompass the broad spectrum of rail careers. It is also expected that greater standardisation of job/role specific terminology will result in improved understanding of career pathways both within rail organisations and externally in the labour market.

This project has three to four main deliverables. First, gathering and mapping of current career paths and associated learning and development and identification of gaps in information. Second, explicating one example of a career path (train drivers) as a model for mapping career pathways and associated learning and development for other occupations. Third, ascertaining the scope of the subsequent project into Career Pathways. Fourth, developing a sound methodology to map the wider range of occupational career paths and associated learning and development in rail organisations.