How to Bring Diversity into Industry: Industrial Experiences in Public Transport Repair and Maintenance

Abstract

This paper on industrial experience reports on two prominent public transport companies who decided to incorporate diversity more substantially into their corporate culture. To achieve the integration, an initiative was started and a project together with Fraunhofer Austria Research (Fraunhofer) and Technische Universität Wien (TU Wien) was launched. The project aims to support the companies in preparing their strategy for upcoming challenges such as the retirement of a large corpus of workers, recruiting new trainees, and finding new jobs for people within the company, whose working environment has changed drastically, e.g., due to the loss of bus or train driving licences because of health restrictions. The desired integration to strengthen diversity in their corporate culture started with shop inspections, expert interviews, diversity & future workshops, and a user study on a prototypical work system. The results were incorporated into diversity guidelines considering various drivers of change.