In my last column I explained how morale among public transport employees has hit rock bottom. Here’s what we need to do to fix it
The industry has lost the plot when it comes to motivating those on the frontline and junior managers
Yikes! My last article about the rock bottom morale in transport put the cat among the pigeons as my absolutely bulging postbag at Passenger Transport Towers will testify. There were no dissenters in the ranks and instead an acknowledgment that the industry has lost the plot when it comes to motivating those on the frontline and junior managers.
Several of my pen-pals implored me to suggest ways to improve the situation, so forgive me please for my 10-point plan to try and lift morale out of the relegation zone.
Clear your diary, obliterate meetings and get out in the depot, during the morning run-out or evening run-in, or on stations, buses and trains. Actually talk to colleagues
1. Visit frontline colleagues!
It’s incredible that I even have to state the obvious, but the penny hasn’t dropped with many leaders. Unless you have the social skills of a newt, it’s generally a truism that the more time you spend with people, the more chances you have of building a relationship! However, we still have senior leaders’ working days dictated by whatever conference call or meeting (for meeting’s sake) that appears on their Outlook calendar. The owning groups don’t help with their pointless daily conference calls to go through a series of metrics that seldom change from one day to the next. These calls are generally made by some divisional bod who is only able to justify their role by looking at a tracker and enslaving each subsidiary team, asking them so-called ‘spikey chair’ questions while studying their spreadsheets of red, amber and green. None of these metrics, let alone the summation of them are ever testament as to the quality of customer service that is actually being delivered for customers and their satisfaction with their experience. Clear your diary, obliterate meetings and get out in the depot, during the morning run-out or evening run-in, or on stations, buses and trains. Actually talk to colleagues.
2. Engage in chit chat
I kid you not, sometimes I watch senior leaders in action and their lack of interpersonal skills makes me wince. They just clam up and are incapable of making conversation with employees. Whether managing bus depots, railway stations, offices or mail centres and delivery offices in a previous life for Royal Mail, I would always research in advance about the local area in advance of going there – anything from the fortune of the football team, to the nightlife, the nearby attractions, newsworthy stuff – so that I could make chit-chat with folk and try and build a rapport.
So too, I can’t believe how many managers are also incapable of conversation and instead fill awkward silences by talking management jargon or about the work stuff they are interested in or putting on some kind of stilted voice with scripted content, generally about some boring corporate nonsense. It’s so self-obsessed and unnatural – start by asking stuff like ‘what are your plans for the weekend?’ or ‘do you live close to here?’ or ‘how’s the family?’. Everyone likes talking about themselves, so it’s a great way of unlocking conversations.
3. Don’t be secretive
I’ve always got on really well with the trade unions – in fact, in nearly 30 years, I don’t think I’ve had a single dispute on my watch. Part of the reason is because I’ve always valued the commercial nous of the unions and frontline employees. At Royal Mail, instead of management conferences, I organised ‘team conferences’ involving all my managers and the local, full-time trade union representatives. At every session, the fabulous deputy general secretary for CWU, Terry Pullinger, and I, would do speeches about our commercial and strategic goals, and we’d then spend the day sharing sensitive information and developing plans together. There were no dress rehearsal management conferences beforehand, we realised we were all one team.
If anything, I found trade unions were more commercially motivated and astute than many senior managers in the business
If anything, I found trade unions were more commercially motivated and astute than many senior managers in the business and were very much an ally to kickstart some of my peers and superiors into action. Too often, leaders across transport instinctively think that frontline employees and their trade union representatives are not interested or motivated by the commercial imperative or even intelligent enough to understand it, let alone develop ideas to support it. It’s so disingenuous.
4. Cut out social media nonsense
The claptrap on social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter is so inane it is ridiculous. If senior leaders invested as much time posting on their excellent company frontline employee engagement apps as they do trying to impress their peers or get a new job on LinkedIn or Twitter then transport would be a far, far better place. Most of the time they just exploit employees as the ‘extras’ in their own ‘look at me’ life story. They don’t really give two hoots about Frontline Frank, he’s just there for a photoshoot of you in the depot acting as some amazing leader.
Furthermore, some senior leaders have absolutely zero self-awareness. They show pictures of themselves on buses and trains as though they’ve set foot into the unknown on some big adventure – don’t you realise IT’S YOUR JOB! Then, there are the absent leaders, constantly picturing themselves or their teams on glamorous long distance trips. Talk about a bypass in self-awareness!
5. Develop your duty managers
Have you ever shadowed a duty manager for a shift? It’s certainly entertaining. These poor souls spend around eight hours in complete reactive mode, firefighting, answering the phone in a panic, persuading drivers to do extra shifts and generally keeping the show on the road. Most would claim this is of course what they are employed to do, but they seldom, if ever, create the headspace to approach their tasks in a more methodical way and to look at what they are there to achieve in terms of driving customer satisfaction.
As a matter of urgency, every duty manager should have a formal development plan and benefit from ‘managing customer service’ training
All of them will unilaterally agree that they aren’t really managers – they don’t set or monitor objectives, they seldom get feedback on decisions they’ve made or have the ability to review what they could have done differently and they don’t have simple tools such as customer service standards or clear guidelines to genuinely be managers. Their senior managers don’t invest time in their development and they aren’t even briefed on what the company’s Customer Services Strategy is and their crucial role in making it happen (if such a strategy exists). As a matter of urgency, every duty manager should have a formal development plan and benefit from ‘managing customer service’ training so that they can create and understand how best to use a governance model to drive customer satisfaction and have the tools and techniques to inspire frontline employees and enthuse them during their repetitive roles.
6. Understand their allegiances
It never ceases to amaze me how senior leaders convince themselves that frontline employees buy-into the ethos of their ‘owning group’. I’ve seen countless managers talk utter twaddle in depots and on trains and stations to employees about the latest results affecting the parent company and the future strategy as though they really care. Then there are those culture change programmes called the ‘[Insert parent company here] Way’ or some other brainwashing nonsense.
It makes me snigger when these leaders say, “the staff are devastated we’ve lost the franchise”. They couldn’t give two hoots. In the rail industry, employees see themselves as working for the train company or the railway itself and in bus, it’s generally for the local depot within the subsidiary or the community, rather than some big conglomerate. The independent bus companies are probably those that manage to raise greatest affinity from their people. When GB Railways is born, there’s a real opportunity to re-connect and inspire all railway employees around a common cause, rather than delusional cobblers trying to get them to care about some remote overseas owning group
7. Bequeath bonuses!
I’ve always found it bonkers that bonuses, with a few exceptions, tend to be excluded from the roles of frontline employees – as though they don’t deserve them, or it would be too complicated for them to be constructed, or they wouldn’t understand how to achieve them in the first place. If managers have a bonus objective to increase customer satisfaction and sales, then why can’t those who are closest to the action, and most capable of making the difference, be incentivised? It would also for many, help create more variety and momentum to sometimes repetitive roles and I’m sure it would unlock lots of innovative approaches for them to spend more time talking to customers and non-users and dream up ways to better respond to their needs. If senior management put this in the ‘too difficult’ tray then, at the very least, develop some kind of means to recognise high performance and correlate it with opportunities for career progression!
Creating a clean, bright, well maintained, welcoming working environment helps to enthuse employees
8. Spruce up the workplace
Creating a clean, bright, well maintained, welcoming working environment helps to enthuse employees. What proportion of us turn our nose up at eating in the staff canteen because the food is inedible? Many of these places probably have a lower ‘Scores on the Doors’ hygiene rating than their company’s customer satisfaction survey result. Although money is tight, it’s a false economy to scrimping on the basics of a decent depot environment for frontline employees. You’d never expect the managing director to have an office as decrepit as the staff messroom or booking on point, and it’s a bit odd sending bus drivers out of the most antiquated, rancid depot onto a lavish, luxurious expensive bus. The disparity between conditions for customers and employees tells a tale of a company that doesn’t realise there is a correlation between employee engagement and customer satisfaction.
9. Diversity breaks barriers
There’s a problem in that many companies think diversity and inclusion is a game – the chance to put a few buzzwords in board reports and the ‘social value’ section in tender bids, rather than the opportunity to genuinely get closer to and resonate with frontline employees. Walk round a bus or rail depot and in many cases you can see the void in terms of rapport and interaction between employees and managers. Part of the problem is because many managers don’t actually reflect the demographic make-up of the communities they serve and therefore, in some cases, have little empathy with their employees. There are exceptions, but dealing with the diversity challenge is a priority for a whole host of reasons, but particularly in terms of driving improvements in morale.
10. Say ‘well done’ the right way
A few weeks ago, I spent a day with a station manager at a train company and she spent time in ticket offices feeding back to frontline employees’ specific mystery shopping reports that my team and I had done on them. To see the look of joy and pride on the faces of those receiving accolades was a wonderful sight.
From CEO to platform cleaner, it really doesn’t matter, we all like to be recognised when we’ve done a good job. However, it’s got to be done in the right way
From CEO to platform cleaner, it really doesn’t matter, we all like to be recognised when we’ve done a good job. However, it’s got to be done in the right way. Too often managers again turn it into themselves with their ‘So proud of my team for their amazing achievement’ when really what they’re trying to say is ‘what a great manager I’ve been’. When giving feedback it’s got to be sincere and authentic and not a load of cheesy, patronising ‘haven’t you done well?’ platitudes addressed to frontline employees as though they are children. These are the same leaders that refer to them as ‘my people’, ‘the troops’ or ‘staff’. They’re none of these – in fact, the best way to describe them is as ‘colleagues’, which thankfully, in a rare act of progress, many companies are increasingly doing. Small progress, but progress, nonetheless.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alex Warner has over 28 years’ experience in the transport sector, having held senior roles on a multi-modal basis across the sector
This article appears in the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
My 10-point plan for boosting morale
by Passenger Transport on Mar 10, 2022 • 8:03 pm No CommentsIn my last column I explained how morale among public transport employees has hit rock bottom. Here’s what we need to do to fix it
Yikes! My last article about the rock bottom morale in transport put the cat among the pigeons as my absolutely bulging postbag at Passenger Transport Towers will testify. There were no dissenters in the ranks and instead an acknowledgment that the industry has lost the plot when it comes to motivating those on the frontline and junior managers.
Several of my pen-pals implored me to suggest ways to improve the situation, so forgive me please for my 10-point plan to try and lift morale out of the relegation zone.
1. Visit frontline colleagues!
It’s incredible that I even have to state the obvious, but the penny hasn’t dropped with many leaders. Unless you have the social skills of a newt, it’s generally a truism that the more time you spend with people, the more chances you have of building a relationship! However, we still have senior leaders’ working days dictated by whatever conference call or meeting (for meeting’s sake) that appears on their Outlook calendar. The owning groups don’t help with their pointless daily conference calls to go through a series of metrics that seldom change from one day to the next. These calls are generally made by some divisional bod who is only able to justify their role by looking at a tracker and enslaving each subsidiary team, asking them so-called ‘spikey chair’ questions while studying their spreadsheets of red, amber and green. None of these metrics, let alone the summation of them are ever testament as to the quality of customer service that is actually being delivered for customers and their satisfaction with their experience. Clear your diary, obliterate meetings and get out in the depot, during the morning run-out or evening run-in, or on stations, buses and trains. Actually talk to colleagues.
2. Engage in chit chat
I kid you not, sometimes I watch senior leaders in action and their lack of interpersonal skills makes me wince. They just clam up and are incapable of making conversation with employees. Whether managing bus depots, railway stations, offices or mail centres and delivery offices in a previous life for Royal Mail, I would always research in advance about the local area in advance of going there – anything from the fortune of the football team, to the nightlife, the nearby attractions, newsworthy stuff – so that I could make chit-chat with folk and try and build a rapport.
So too, I can’t believe how many managers are also incapable of conversation and instead fill awkward silences by talking management jargon or about the work stuff they are interested in or putting on some kind of stilted voice with scripted content, generally about some boring corporate nonsense. It’s so self-obsessed and unnatural – start by asking stuff like ‘what are your plans for the weekend?’ or ‘do you live close to here?’ or ‘how’s the family?’. Everyone likes talking about themselves, so it’s a great way of unlocking conversations.
3. Don’t be secretive
I’ve always got on really well with the trade unions – in fact, in nearly 30 years, I don’t think I’ve had a single dispute on my watch. Part of the reason is because I’ve always valued the commercial nous of the unions and frontline employees. At Royal Mail, instead of management conferences, I organised ‘team conferences’ involving all my managers and the local, full-time trade union representatives. At every session, the fabulous deputy general secretary for CWU, Terry Pullinger, and I, would do speeches about our commercial and strategic goals, and we’d then spend the day sharing sensitive information and developing plans together. There were no dress rehearsal management conferences beforehand, we realised we were all one team.
If anything, I found trade unions were more commercially motivated and astute than many senior managers in the business and were very much an ally to kickstart some of my peers and superiors into action. Too often, leaders across transport instinctively think that frontline employees and their trade union representatives are not interested or motivated by the commercial imperative or even intelligent enough to understand it, let alone develop ideas to support it. It’s so disingenuous.
4. Cut out social media nonsense
The claptrap on social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter is so inane it is ridiculous. If senior leaders invested as much time posting on their excellent company frontline employee engagement apps as they do trying to impress their peers or get a new job on LinkedIn or Twitter then transport would be a far, far better place. Most of the time they just exploit employees as the ‘extras’ in their own ‘look at me’ life story. They don’t really give two hoots about Frontline Frank, he’s just there for a photoshoot of you in the depot acting as some amazing leader.
Furthermore, some senior leaders have absolutely zero self-awareness. They show pictures of themselves on buses and trains as though they’ve set foot into the unknown on some big adventure – don’t you realise IT’S YOUR JOB! Then, there are the absent leaders, constantly picturing themselves or their teams on glamorous long distance trips. Talk about a bypass in self-awareness!
5. Develop your duty managers
Have you ever shadowed a duty manager for a shift? It’s certainly entertaining. These poor souls spend around eight hours in complete reactive mode, firefighting, answering the phone in a panic, persuading drivers to do extra shifts and generally keeping the show on the road. Most would claim this is of course what they are employed to do, but they seldom, if ever, create the headspace to approach their tasks in a more methodical way and to look at what they are there to achieve in terms of driving customer satisfaction.
All of them will unilaterally agree that they aren’t really managers – they don’t set or monitor objectives, they seldom get feedback on decisions they’ve made or have the ability to review what they could have done differently and they don’t have simple tools such as customer service standards or clear guidelines to genuinely be managers. Their senior managers don’t invest time in their development and they aren’t even briefed on what the company’s Customer Services Strategy is and their crucial role in making it happen (if such a strategy exists). As a matter of urgency, every duty manager should have a formal development plan and benefit from ‘managing customer service’ training so that they can create and understand how best to use a governance model to drive customer satisfaction and have the tools and techniques to inspire frontline employees and enthuse them during their repetitive roles.
6. Understand their allegiances
It never ceases to amaze me how senior leaders convince themselves that frontline employees buy-into the ethos of their ‘owning group’. I’ve seen countless managers talk utter twaddle in depots and on trains and stations to employees about the latest results affecting the parent company and the future strategy as though they really care. Then there are those culture change programmes called the ‘[Insert parent company here] Way’ or some other brainwashing nonsense.
It makes me snigger when these leaders say, “the staff are devastated we’ve lost the franchise”. They couldn’t give two hoots. In the rail industry, employees see themselves as working for the train company or the railway itself and in bus, it’s generally for the local depot within the subsidiary or the community, rather than some big conglomerate. The independent bus companies are probably those that manage to raise greatest affinity from their people. When GB Railways is born, there’s a real opportunity to re-connect and inspire all railway employees around a common cause, rather than delusional cobblers trying to get them to care about some remote overseas owning group
7. Bequeath bonuses!
I’ve always found it bonkers that bonuses, with a few exceptions, tend to be excluded from the roles of frontline employees – as though they don’t deserve them, or it would be too complicated for them to be constructed, or they wouldn’t understand how to achieve them in the first place. If managers have a bonus objective to increase customer satisfaction and sales, then why can’t those who are closest to the action, and most capable of making the difference, be incentivised? It would also for many, help create more variety and momentum to sometimes repetitive roles and I’m sure it would unlock lots of innovative approaches for them to spend more time talking to customers and non-users and dream up ways to better respond to their needs. If senior management put this in the ‘too difficult’ tray then, at the very least, develop some kind of means to recognise high performance and correlate it with opportunities for career progression!
8. Spruce up the workplace
Creating a clean, bright, well maintained, welcoming working environment helps to enthuse employees. What proportion of us turn our nose up at eating in the staff canteen because the food is inedible? Many of these places probably have a lower ‘Scores on the Doors’ hygiene rating than their company’s customer satisfaction survey result. Although money is tight, it’s a false economy to scrimping on the basics of a decent depot environment for frontline employees. You’d never expect the managing director to have an office as decrepit as the staff messroom or booking on point, and it’s a bit odd sending bus drivers out of the most antiquated, rancid depot onto a lavish, luxurious expensive bus. The disparity between conditions for customers and employees tells a tale of a company that doesn’t realise there is a correlation between employee engagement and customer satisfaction.
9. Diversity breaks barriers
There’s a problem in that many companies think diversity and inclusion is a game – the chance to put a few buzzwords in board reports and the ‘social value’ section in tender bids, rather than the opportunity to genuinely get closer to and resonate with frontline employees. Walk round a bus or rail depot and in many cases you can see the void in terms of rapport and interaction between employees and managers. Part of the problem is because many managers don’t actually reflect the demographic make-up of the communities they serve and therefore, in some cases, have little empathy with their employees. There are exceptions, but dealing with the diversity challenge is a priority for a whole host of reasons, but particularly in terms of driving improvements in morale.
10. Say ‘well done’ the right way
A few weeks ago, I spent a day with a station manager at a train company and she spent time in ticket offices feeding back to frontline employees’ specific mystery shopping reports that my team and I had done on them. To see the look of joy and pride on the faces of those receiving accolades was a wonderful sight.
From CEO to platform cleaner, it really doesn’t matter, we all like to be recognised when we’ve done a good job. However, it’s got to be done in the right way. Too often managers again turn it into themselves with their ‘So proud of my team for their amazing achievement’ when really what they’re trying to say is ‘what a great manager I’ve been’. When giving feedback it’s got to be sincere and authentic and not a load of cheesy, patronising ‘haven’t you done well?’ platitudes addressed to frontline employees as though they are children. These are the same leaders that refer to them as ‘my people’, ‘the troops’ or ‘staff’. They’re none of these – in fact, the best way to describe them is as ‘colleagues’, which thankfully, in a rare act of progress, many companies are increasingly doing. Small progress, but progress, nonetheless.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alex Warner has over 28 years’ experience in the transport sector, having held senior roles on a multi-modal basis across the sector
This article appears in the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
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