Shenshuo Railway Branch Company：Caring for the happiness of Shenshuo people to promote the social development together

Company profile
 
Shenshuo Railway is one of the key construction programs of China’s eighth five-year plan, an essential consisting part of Shenhua Group Corporation Limited’s engineering system covering coal, power, road, port, shipping, coal-to-liquid and coal chemicals, and the second major route transporting coal from west to east China after Da-Qin railway. The main line of the railway is 270 kilometers, passing through 8 counties and cities in Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces, serving as the nation’s I class electric heavy-loading railway. Shenshuo Railway Branch Company(Shenshuo) upholds the spirit of “striking to be first and excellent” firmly, having doubled its coal transportation quantity year after year and increased its transportation income by several times. Both the economic and social benefits are remarkable. At present, Shenshuo Railway has been the busiest freight railway in China, ranking second in terms of transportation volume.
 
Challenges
 
The maintenance and governance of the railway lines is a necessary condition for the safe, stable and efficient operation of railways. However, located in the great northwest region of China and stretching across the Jin-Shan Loess Plateau, the natural condition along the Shenshuo Railway is severe and there are many bridges and tunnels. Most of the stations along the route are built leaning the mountains far away from the towns. The staff canteens in the station areas are simple and crude and there is also a shortage of accommodations. The living conditions are bad and the traffic is not convenient. Therefore, staff in the front line of Shenshuo station areas are uncultured, divided, inefficient, depressed and lack of stimulation to work. As a result, the company is facing many problems, including a high turnover rate, unable to keep people willingly work in the front line, an unbalanced and unstable staff team which is hard to form a force to work for the company’s development. These greatly impede the safe and smooth operation of its energy transportation business, having become a bottleneck for the company’s development.
 
Therefore, the main task of Shenshuo Railway livelihood project is to improve the living conditions of the staff along the route and to solve the eating, living and transporting problems perplexing them. This is also the premise to unite development force and to realize the stable and high-speed development of Shenshuo.
 
Solutions
 
Food：Building quality canteen to supply green food
 
In aspect of canteen building, Shenshuo improves its accommodation ability constantly. It increased the number of cooking machines to improve the efficiency of processing food, employed more people to work in the canteens so as to improve service ability and provided various seasonal dishes and snacks to realize diversity in food.
 
In terms of farming and breeding base, Shenshuo built its own vegetable greenhouses, pig farms, intelligent greenhouses, fishponds and poultry raising areas, producing over 30 kinds of vegetables, three kinds of pork, several types of tropical fruit and more than 10 types of poultry. These are distributed to the 24 staff canteens and supermarkets along the route, providing great convenience for the staff to purchase and eat. Beginning with building canteens and farming and breeding bases, Shenshuo renders employees in remote areas have access to trustworthy food like vegetables, melons, fruit, meat, eggs and poultry at any time, thus creating “happiness on the tongue” with Shenshuo characteristics.
 
Accommodation: Improving living condition and adding amenities
 
In order to meet the increasing need for housing and to improve the bad living conditions, Shenshuo rebuilt old apartment buildings and improved the current living condition to improve accommodation capacity. It built new residential buildings in some station areas short of living rooms. Besides, it also built supporting facilities like underground garages, laundries, kindergartens and clinics to make employees live a convenient and carefree life.
 
Meanwhile, Shenshuo established a property management center to take charge of the sanitation, cleaning and greening of the station areas, which creates a green and beautiful living environment for employees and benefits people living around the stations. Besides, Shenshuo built large-area ecological orchards and launched afforestation activities to improve the livability of the station areas and to beautify the ecological environment.
 
Transportation：Building safe shuttles to ensure the smooth commuting
 
In order to solve the commuting difficulty facing the employees in remote station areas, Shenshuo established a team of shuttle bus consisting of 11 drivers and 16 shuttle buses and set fixed shuttle bus stations along the main streets in towns. With the expanding of commuting need, Shenshuo has increased the frequency of shuttling, checks and maintains the buses timely so as to ensure the quality of commuting service and to provide convenience for its employees.
 
Achievements
 
Social benefits
 
Assisting local employment and setting a good example of local-enterprise cooperation. On the one hand, Shenshuo railway realized localized employment and the number of local employees take up around 30% of all the employees. On the other hand, the programs carried out by Shenshuo along the route, like station area construction, outsourcing of logistic services, raising and planting bases, and Dayue life supermarket, all adopted the mode of local and enterprise cooperation, which created many jobs for local people.
 
Exerting its internal advantages to achieve district radiation effect. The construction of Shenshuo livelihood projects not only benefited the mass employees, but also the local development. The success of raising and planting bases was highly appraised by leaders of the Group and the local government and set an example for local and enterprise cooperation. Besides, the self-produced green vegetables sold in the supermarket, garbage collection at a fixed time and location and public restrooms along the main route all provided great convenience for local people.
 
Building green living environment and launching greening programs can not only beautify the living environment in the station areas, but also adds a green radiance to scenery along the route. At present, Shenshuo has built an ecological orchard of 2700 square meters, setting an ecological utilization example of groundwater treatment and growing melons and fruits on the ground. Apart from this, nearly 2000 trees were planted in areas around the station area, which effectively reduced soil erosion and improved the surrounding environment.
 
Economic benefits
 
Wining the loyalty of employees and reducing the cost of human resources. As the livelihood projects are constantly improving, the employees are able to live and work without worries, the working team is becoming steady, and the cost of human resources is lowering. So far, senior workers take up 18% of all the staff, and intermediate workers account for 57%. Over one hundred employees were awarded the honor of “technical expert in central enterprises”. A technical talent team with intermediate and senior workers as main force, technicians and senior technicians as backbone is formed. It saved the cost of human resources by more than 4 million yuan in 2016. After more than 10 years of development, the staff number of Shenshuo has increased from over 4000 in 2006 to the present 7528.
 
Uniting staff forces to facilitate the company’s business development. The efforts Shenshuo has made in improving livelihood greatly improve the staff’s satisfaction degree, and render the employees to serve the smooth operation of energy transportation with a good mental look. Since 2002, the number of breakdowns has reduced by 94.74%, delay due to breakdowns by 95.49%, and causality of non-railway men by 86.96%, which builds a solid safety foundation for the steady transmission of energy. From 2006, the transportation volume of Shenshuo Railway has broken through 2000 billion tons, with an average annual growth rate of 6.43%, and the average annual revenue growth rate reaches 5.5%.
 
Realizing producing and marketing all by itself to lower the operation cost of the company. The planting and raising base of Shenshuo has achieved the “special supply” mode of marketing its own products, which saves lots of money for purchase. Statistics show that the planting and raising base has supplied 794,200 tons of self-produced green vegetables and 651,500 kilograms healthy meat for the staff canteens.
 
Prospects
 
Shenshuo, guided by the employee culture of “co-building the family and sharing the happiness”，will continue to implement the livelihood projects, ensure the living standards, quality and conditions of employees to be improved and realize the good situation of “ harmony of railways and community for win-win future”.