Leadership Development in Transit Operations - A Focus on Graduate Programs
A worthwhile resolution going into the new year should be looking at succession planning, and as part of that, talent acquisition and development.
Even today, I see many bus and coach operators who depend heavily on a few individuals with vast institutional knowledge, and whose loss would be difficult for the company to replace. Often the individuals are nearing retirement, and little effort is expended bringing people on to step up. In other cases, knowledge sits with a couple of key individuals who want to move out of the company or industry.
We often recognize and intend to address this, but busyness and firefighting means that time flies by and suddenly we hit a crisis point and a skills and leadership gap. We then either try to dig through it, sometimes by having unprepared staff step up, resulting in stress, burnout and eventual loss of the colleague, or we are forced to hire from outside, which can be costly.
In this article I want to take a look at hiring graduates and fast-tracking them into your organization as part of your efforts to strengthen your teams and be prepared for the future.
Introducing the Graduate Recruitment Program
A graduate program hires recent college graduates and exposes them to all aspects of the company over the course of a year. Typically, they’ll go into a management position afterwards and soon find their niche, which may be anywhere from service planning, to being president/managing director of a division and beyond.
But you need something attractive to hire graduates onto, and to sell to your local and regional colleges and universities so that they'll include you in their preferred recruiter lists for students. That’s where a good Graduate Recruitment Program comes into play.
Where do I start?
Ground Rules
There are some ground rules regarding the establishment of a program. It's not the responsibility of your Human Resources department to establish and maintain, it's a deliberate effort from the highest management in the organization to prioritize and commit to talent development and succession planning. Here are some ground rules prior to looking at a framework:
The candidate is committed to the program for the year. They don’t have a ‘day-job’ as such. Their time is spent rotating through all aspects of the business, both at the garage and out in the field, corporate offices, call centers etc.
Bus driving in revenue service is mandatory unless it's not possible for reasons of disability etc. The graduate should repeat their driving test until they make it. It gears the graduate up so well for driver interactions and customer empathy in all aspects of management later.
The program and graduates progress must be followed and reviewed by a senior person regularly. In a family run business, this might be one of the owners. In agency or larger corporations, the CEO, COO or a direct report should own the candidates progress, with quarterly reviews. A local manager should be the graduates day-to-day mentor.
There should be a junior management position for the candidate to move into in about 12 months. This requires advance planning and foresight.
As you start, the program will be an evolving document over time. You'll add, remove and tweak items as you see relevant. But it is important that no aspects of operating the bus company are left out. You need to provide the 'full picture' in this fast-track year.
Example Program Outline
A good starting point is breaking your program down into 1 monthly rotations, with a few months spent on the driving aspect.
Here is a basic outline:
Here's a deeper dive into what a graduate might do in each of these modules. Borrow, amend, add, remove as you see fit:
Months 1-3 - Training, Drivers License, Revenue Service
To include all aspects of new driver recruitment. Sit through the classroom modules, computer based learning modules, learning to drive, driving in service, all shifts.
Month 4 – Operations Dispatch
To include all aspects of dispatch – forward allocation, sign-on, sign-off, all shifts, variation handling, logs etc.
Month 5 – Supervisory and Management
Discipline, hiring, operations management, reporting etc.
Month 6 – Operations – Administration
Insurance filing, subrogation, employment applications, cash counting, audit preparation, complaint management, payroll processing etc.
Month 7 – Maintenance – Floor
Shadowing and working with teams in various aspects of maintenance – preventative, inspection, defect, campaign, bodywork, cleaning and fueling crews – all shifts.
Month 8 – Maintenance – Supervisory and Management
Shadowing maintenance supervisors – quality audits, staff management, fleet availability planning.
Month 9 – Maintenance – Administrative
Working with the inventory personnel, fleet management system, document processing, payroll processing.
Month 10 – Commercial Development
New route development, new business opportunities (requests for proposals, invitations to tender etc), contract renewals, local authority meetings.
Month 11 – Commercial Analysis
Report generation, route profitability analysis, fleet utilization, schedule creation, bus blocking, run cutting, rostering, efficiency metrics.
Month 12 – Head Office
Strategy insights, Profit and Loss, Cashflows, wider stakeholder engagement activities – with corporate, with local authorities, with senior union personnel, with policy makers.
Tracking Progress
Within each module, progress trackers should be developed and maintained. The document should be kept for review and form the talking points with the mentor and at senior reviews.
Something like the following can be used as a template:
Supplementary Training
There will be a number of supplementary training courses that may be required to fulfill local legal obligations, or you may wish to introduce to the program to advance the skillset of the candidate and mitigate risks to the business. In my experience this included:
Program Review Structure
Finally, the program should be endorsed and have participation from the top ranks of the business. Periodic reviews should be done at the highest levels, with more frequent reviews locally. The candidate should be meeting their local mentor – a trusted person to onboard – at least weekly. A review structure may look something like this:
End of Month 12
At the end of the year, the value of the investment in the graduate will be apparent. They will be ready to take on their first substantive position, and as they continue to develop and grow, may find themselves settling into a niche within the business, or becoming a future head of your organization.
Their well-rounded experience will set them up to be a strong asset to your operation regardless of how far they go and your investment of time and resource into them will elevate the professionalism of your company, reinforce it's continuity resilience, and contribute to our industries reputation.
Good luck!
A Personal Note - My Experience
I’m a product of the (what is now the) Stagecoach Group Limited Graduate Development Scheme which was structured very similar to what was outlined above. I was in awe of what I saw people not much older than me being able to do - manage people, deal with crisis, run a well-oiled business. I thought I was out of my depth!
However, the training and support resulted in my path taking me from graduate trainee to managing facilities of over 200 vehicles and 600 drivers 2 years from starting the program.
I then led the group’s successful application to provide transportation and facilities management for the London 2012 Olympics.
Megabus, an intercity bus service with retail, capacity, and revenue management akin to what airlines were doing at the time, was just getting started in the USA and Canada and I was asked to help with those efforts. That soon after became one of the biggest successful transportation stories in the US and Canada.
This note is not to list my accomplishments, but to emphasize that I did not see any of these opportunities coming when I started fresh out of university.
For the sake of a years upfront investment in my development, the group has had an immense financial return and I remained part of the groups success for many years. My story isn't unique. There are many others that have similar stories having come from similar programs in our industry. It's a program worth serious consideration if you don't have one already.