Peer review: Mary Kenny
Chief Executive Officer, Eversholt Rail
Neil makes a number of relevant points in his letter about the future of skills in the rail sector. It is clear that there will be an increasing demand for skills in the sector, and it is good to note the various government and National Skills Academy for Rail Engineering initiatives that are being put in place to address the shortage.
Additionally, I believe there needs to be more effort in promoting rail as a great career, and in mobilising individual companies within rail to promote the industry and to create optimal conditions for employees to thrive in.
As Neil points out, rail provides a good career. But there is a real lack of awareness of rail as an attractive career path, especially in our schools and even at our universities. The rail industry needs engineers, but it also provides excellent opportunities for many disciplines including finance, sales, IT, HR and general management. This can often get overshadowed by the focus on the need to attract engineers.
While I believe the current leaders of businesses within this industry should not be relying on pan-industry initiatives, but instead ensuring that they are making a difference in their own organisations, there are undoubtedly some areas where additional pan-industry initiatives could be valuable.
Although the industry is not known for its PR skills, perhaps it is time to consider initiatives such as a major TV campaign to bring rail into the consciousness of future generations. The impact of the screen can be seen with the amount of discussion that programmes on Crossrail have generated. I have had more conversations about the rail industry with people outside the industry as a result of this programming than any other thing I can think of.
Some work is already being done, as exemplified by the Routes into Rail initiative (www.routesintorail.co.uk) where a flashy website and a video has been put together to showcase the various opportunities available in the industry. As Neil points out, the industry is becoming much more high-tech, and hence the image needs to evolve accordingly - this will make the sector more attractive to newcomers.
In addition, we need to broaden our perspectives on where and how we recruit people into the industry. We need to create relationships not only with universities and secondary schools but also with primary schools, in order to foster a longer-term interest in the industry. We need to target people from diverse backgrounds and other industries, in order to be supplied with fresh perspectives and more diverse skills sets. To do this, we need to think of innovative and flexible ways of employment - for example, the Thames Tideway Tunnel Returner programme, where the purpose is to attract people back into the industry after a career break.
And to address the current issue of a real shortage of leadership skills at senior levels, the rail industry is well positioned to meet the demand from high-calibre leaders from other industries looking to work on a more flexible or part-time basis, compared with what their current industries are able to offer.
It is also true that a significant proportion of the current workforce is set to retire in the next ten years. However, as we have seen at Eversholt Rail, those who retire (or who are thinking about retiring) are often not about to stop working. As with our trains, we should focus more on ‘life extensions’ for our late-career employees, offering them more flexible work and benefiting from their experience and expertise in a mentoring and coaching capacity. As we redesign our performance appraisal process at Eversholt Rail, the idea of the ‘Sixty Year Career’ will be firmly placed at the heart of the process. This, I believe, will alleviate the pressure on the leadership and management skills shortage, as we would be able to foster the necessary skills in the future generations.
But while a focus on attracting newcomers is relevant, it should not be at the expense of providing excellent career development opportunities and working conditions for our current employees. As Neil states, staff turnover has been low and many people work in the sector for their whole working life, but we cannot rely on this as the younger generations will not continue to display such loyalty.
According to LinkedIn’s recent report on Why and How People Change Jobs in Europe, the top two reasons why European employees changed jobs were a concern for career opportunities and wanting more challenging work. Interestingly, the third reason was being unsatisfied with the leadership of senior management, and the fourth was being unsatisfied with the work environment/culture. By having robust career development frameworks and by investing in leadership and management skills, as well as by creating productive working cultures, we can create environments that retain our employees to a greater extent.
Neil states that the “macro economic messages about rail, growth and technology have not got through to the people the industry needs to attract”. I firmly believe that this is where individual businesses can pick up the baton. By addressing the issues discussed above, attracting newcomers to the industry should be much easier. With the growth in social media (in both attracting and retaining employees), our employees will increasingly act as ambassadors and role models for the rail industry, contributing significantly to the promotion and sustainability of the industry.
