Zoë Geal and Mandy Geal
The working environment in a services and maintenance depot is fast-paced, task-oriented, and 24/7. There is relentless pressure to get trains into service in a short amount of time despite bad weather, delays, and cancellations. There are practical problems: safety issues, supply chain delays, and staffing/skills shortages, which result in altered plans for workload allocation. For the depot staff it’s unpredictable: at times hectic, quiet, or chaotic, with tight deadlines and changing priorities.
This often leads to high levels of stress, as well as physical, mental, and emotional wear and tear. There are ‘people problems’ for leaders and managers dealing with workers under pressure: resolving conflicts and personality clashes, managing communication between shifts, and having decisions challenged. The net result is that people focus on getting the job done at the expense of their own, and others’, personal development, and wellbeing.
This was very much in evidence when Learning Partners was asked to deliver its leadership development programme for depot staff in a large operations, maintenance, and services rail business.
Understanding the issue
To design the programme, we interviewed leaders from all levels to understand the issues and challenges facing staff, their root causes, and the outcomes that the depots needed to achieve. Some of these challenges couldn’t be changed, as they were inherent to the type of work, so we focused instead on what they could do.
As the manager of the West London depot explained: “I am very clear that the goal for our depot is to provide an excellent service to customers. My biggest challenge is that even if you’ve got good people, if you haven’t got them working as a team around you – sharing the goals and taking responsibility for delivering the service – you won’t succeed.”
In his mind, the hectic, task-focused, conflict-heavy culture in the depot was not conducive to this vision and had to change.
“I want people to feel psychologically safe, which means you feel you can admit to mistakes without them being held against you; you can speak up and ask for help if you have a problem; you can voice an opinion, even if it’s different to everyone else’s, and you feel that someone’s got your back.”
Uncovering key problems
After some investigation a few key problems became apparent. First, many of the staff were unclear about their own or other people’s responsibilities. As a result, they weren’t taking ownership of decision making, nor was it easy for them to know when to use their skills to tackle problems or gain experience.
Second, a blame culture (often present in high stress environments) meant that when confusion about responsibilities created friction, or when things went wrong, staff were reluctant to admit mistakes, ask questions, or say they didn’t know what to do. This meant problems were not dealt with as soon as they could have been and were often escalated.
Third, unclear priorities, coupled with the requirement to make decisions under great pressure, meant there was a lack of consistency in decision making. All of this put more strain on the senior managers.
“My senior production manager and I micromanage people, which is unsustainable across all shifts. It means that we have very little time to focus on our own work or take a step back from the day-to-day to look at long term improvements.”
Implementing change
It became apparent some clarity was needed. Learning Partners started by creating a competency framework, which outlined the non-technical skills and behaviours that people needed to be effective – from aspiring team leader all the way through to strategic leadership – and set the standard. The framework covered task-related competencies, such as delivering results, and people-related competencies, such as communication.
Leaders and managers then attended training, delivered by Learning Partners, where they practised task- and people-related skills and techniques aimed at tackling depot issues: for example, how to be assertive, give motivating feedback, de-escalate challenging behaviour, and create psychological safety using empathy. They learned to clarify their responsibilities and built role profiles that became the depot standards. They defined their rights and responsibilities as managers and employees, giving them confidence and understanding of what they and their team members were accountable for. After the training, managers used these techniques to clarify other roles in the depot.
They also created a structured set of criteria to make effective well-judged decisions, came up with solutions to difficult depot-related problems, and used the criteria to select the best solution. Applying this quick checklist later in the depot made it easier to make well-balanced decisions and explain the rationale to others in reviews and reports.
In order to embed the training and thereby help the depot long-term, Learning Partners provided an online learning platform with videos, webinars, notes and advice targeted at specific skills and behaviours, which people could access at any time. This was used to refresh understanding of techniques and introduce new hires to them.
Leaders and managers completed a 360° questionnaire, which highlighted skills they were already good at – thereby building their confidence – and focused on specific skills and behaviours to develop. After one-to-one feedback from an experienced Learning Partners coach, each person received a development plan tailored to individual needs, which they used with their managers’ support to embed learning on the job and continue to grow and develop. The aim was to get the best out of people.
The depot leadership encouraged the development of their staff. “We worked with Learning Partners to build on the skills and techniques in the depot and apply the outputs they produced on the training. We created a maintenance development centre with materials from the training and information on roles, competencies, processes, and tasks for people to focus on development and career progression.”
Positive results
The results were impactful. The senior production manager reported: “We’ve noticed that team leaders and managers are taking ownership at their own level, resulting in fewer escalations. This gives us more time to do our own job and focus on long-term strategic improvements to the depot and client service. Managers are tackling problems with poor performance, rather than leaving them to fester or end up with time-consuming disciplinaries.
“Stress levels have reduced because people are better able to recognise triggers, control their own responses, and manage others who are under pressure. We’ve got a common language to give feedback and motivate people and we know how to avoid words that create issues!
“Managers are better able to address mental health problems, they’re more consistent in their decisions, and the staff are gaining more experience learning from one another.” As one new team leader explained, “I am more confident handling start of shift and safety briefings, handling conflicts, and making suggestions for improvements to the way things work.”
The depot manager concluded: “People are working better as a team, understand the business goals and how their actions impact other people’s work. People are more proactive and motivated to improve their capability. Over 30% of our staff have signed up to further development. We have a solid basis to know who is ready for their next promotion and have produced succession plans, which give us greater stability and resilience in the depot.
“Thankfully we’ve removed the risk of the ‘accidental manager’ being put in a management role with no training and creating havoc. We have fewer non-compliance incidents and reports as we are working far more efficiently with effective tools for problem solving, decision making, and workload allocation. What’s good for our people is definitely proving good for our business.”
Image credit: Hitachi Rail / Alstom
