About GB Railfreight
GB Railfreight (GBRf) is one of the UK’s largest freight operators. It runs over 2,000 trainloads a week and moves 20% of Britain’s rail freight, with 99% reliability.
Its 1,400 people work in a heavily regulated, safety-critical industry. The business answers to the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) and the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB), and has its own GDPR, DEI and sustainability goals.
The challenge: from tick-box to behaviour change
Ashenden Wedderburn, GBRf’s Learning and Development Manager, knew traditional compliance training wasn’t enough. Topics like GDPR, information security, sexual harassment and sustainability needed people to change what they do, not just know more.
Phishing was a growing risk. Every employee had to spot a suspicious email and report it.
The training also had to work for a diverse workforce with different roles and needs. And it had to scale, from a 400-person pilot at head office to all 1,400 staff.
“We needed a solution that didn’t just tell people what to do. It needed to show them, engage them, and make them want to learn more.”
Ashenden Wedderburn, L&D Manager, GB Railfreight
The solution
GBRf rolled out VinciWorks’ compliance, information security, DEI and sustainability courses through the Portal, connected to its own learning management system. The team used the In-Browser Editor to add GBRf’s branding, messages and operational context to the courses.
- Engaging content: courses with video, audio and downloadable transcripts.
- Easy to use: the Portal’s Netflix-style interface.
- Hands-on support: proactive account management and quick fixes for technical issues.
The results
Completion rose from about 60% to 100%. The share of users compromised by phishing fell from 14.64% to 2.48%, and reported phishing attempts rose from 10.33% to 28.55%. People also took longer before clicking.
Employees now come back for more training on their own. In 2025, VinciWorks and GBRf won Gold at the Learning Technologies Awards for their work together.
The implementation was flawless. VinciWorks gave us hands-on support every step of the way. It meant we could roll out the training with complete confidence, and that made all the difference in getting early buy-in from our staff.
