How would you feel if your son or daughter was recruited as a ‘rising star’, but not supported and unceremoniously cast aside?
Last week there have been some lovely pictures on LinkedIn of proud parents at their offspring’s graduation ceremonies. It’s been touching to see and also interesting to look at the physical resemblance of some of the youngsters to their parents! However, alongside this, I’ve spent a week ruminating about the troublesome way in which the industry treats its young, fledgling folk. There have been a few cases where I’ve been thinking, ‘how would you feel if your son or daughter had been subjected to this kind of treatment?’.
‘Treat customers the way you would look after your Mum’, is a phrase often spewed out in many a customer service training course, and this principle extends to how we look after employees in the industry and it’s something readers of my column will know has been alarming me more and more in recent years. Forget Keir Starmer’s edict around making it illegal to contact staff out of office hours, that’s the least of the worries of today’s generation. They’re quite happy to take calls and answer emails at all times, they just want their career to be a concern for others and some respect shown for their aspirations and be given some development and tutelage.
Recently, I have stumbled across a couple of situations of late twenty-somethings who have been graduate trainees within transport owning groups, working for several years in the same subsidiary companies – clearly bright, intelligent and customer-centric individuals. Yet, when there’s a change in leadership, a different approach taken within their organisation, they have been cast aside, on notice of redundancy. Investment in their career through the graduate scheme and since, has just been ridden roughshod over. They have been left to fend for themselves, without support from line managers and bereft of pastoral support on a subsidiary and parent company basis. Those clinical, dispassionate decision-makers who control careers and lives, not once, I suspect, pause for a second and think to themselves, ‘how would I feel if my daughter or son were treated in the way that these folk are now having to experience?’. Some have gone weeks, if not months, without even a one-to-one with their line manager or any contact during a challenging re-organisation or redundancy process.
It always raises my eyebrows when I consider the role of Human Resources departments in all this
It always raises my eyebrows when I consider the role of Human Resources departments in all this. There’s no point having folk with fancy names, such as ‘Talent Acquisition Partner’ and the like, if your colleagues in HR do nothing when organisations let talent that has been cultivated from such a young age on a development programme walk out of the door, and without any guidance or support. Sometimes the industry acts so arrogantly that it seems to think that young folk should feel grateful to work in the sector. This isn’t showbiz, or a Premier League football club, or a cutting-edge customer service provider like Apple, John Lewis, Walt Disney or Virgin we’re talking about here, where having these names on your CV is gold dust. We work in an unglamorous and increasingly less relevant sector, that is seen as having regressed. One where the structure is opaque and uncertain and the workforce, at senior management level, lacks diversity in terms of gender, ethnicity and background.
As a consultant and industry observer, I am highly networked and get a very good helicopter view of the strengths and weaknesses of a very wide breadth of businesses. There are some that are very well-run, almost impeccably so. Such companies are customer-centric, treating suppliers with respect and high on engagement. It is in these organisations where you can see and hear examples of younger folk, in particular, having a development plan, a mentor, a clear career path and where losing them from the business is a barely contemplatable scenario.
However, there are other transport companies – not just operators – where there is a clear correlation between their poor performance – financial, customer service and other key indicators – and the mood-music. Again, sometimes that’s discernible to an outsider like me, looking in, through unanswered emails, an inability to make decisions quickly, or just picking up a downbeat demeanour in conversations with employees. You can tell ‘all is not well’, yet, hand on heart, I genuinely believe that those at the top in such organisations are either blissfully unaware, uninterested or in denial. If I can see it, surely they can, or as I said to a colleague about one organisation that is clearly imploding right now, “do you think the CEO and the executive team genuinely think they are doing a good job?”.
There’s one such company that is in such disarray that it is cutting roles in profitable parts of its organisation wholesale, letting talent walk out the business, making people redundant on Teams calls without providing opportunities for support or pastoral care. Young employees, some barely into their twenties, with no one to talk to, no idea as to what to do and folk whose skills are highly technical and specialist but where perhaps their abilities to sell themselves are less finely tuned than generalists. Yet within these organisations, there have been much lauded, costly development programmes, the kind that HR teams love to show off about on LinkedIn or put on their own CVs or hype-up for industry award schemes.
Part of the problem is my generation – the ‘fend for yourself’ mob – and it will only get worse. With some exceptions admittedly, middle-aged folk are, in my view, more selfish than our predecessors. Maybe we resided in a previous era of ruthlessness and the emergence of compromise agreements where it was a case of survival of the fittest , we were too focused on our own requirements to worry about others. This has bred a generation with two following us who the media has often suggested are self-centred and overly focused on their own emotional and materialistic needs. Whilst I am a great believer in the need to focus on mental health, one particular downside of this is that in some quarters it has been taken to the extreme of making folk focused entirely on themselves and their own requirements. I do think that taking all this into account, there are fewer leaders out there prepared to give others the benefit of the support and direction they had in their own careers.
There can be few more satisfying sights than to be part of the development of others; to have influenced in even the smallest way the success of the next generation
What surprises me most though is that even through a selfish lens, there can be few more satisfying sights than to be part of the development of others; to have influenced in even the smallest way the success of the next generation. So too, watching the energy and enthusiasm of aspiring managers unleashed. The highlight of my year, as it always is, has been the West Midlands Grand Rail Collaboration Awayday that I helped facilitate. It involved frontline employees and senior managers across 12 organisations coming together to share ideas around how to improve customer service and plot the next stage towards creating a more customer-centric environment. The sheer passion in the room and the excitement among all attendees at being involved in this exercise is always a joy to behold and keeps me motivated for the whole year. However, it does make me wonder why across the whole of the UK transport sector, this kind of exercise, where frontline folk collaborate with those in other companies and those at the top of the industry’s organisation chart to jointly craft and deliver action plans, isn’t ‘business as usual’. It’s not rocket science.
It’s not just the pleasure of being involved in developing talent, but there’s a great delight to progress towards the latter stages of a career and remember fondly and keep in touch with those managers who help shape you and created memories. Whilst I’ve had a handful of less impressive bosses and some who have completely annoyed me, I still cherish some of the advice and difficult moments, even if I didn’t appreciate them at the time.
‘How would you feel if your son or daughter came home and told you they’d been treated in this way at work?’ is a real litmus test for many bosses. All parents at some time will have to listen to the employment travails of their offspring. No doubt, as I have done, you listen and sometimes feel annoyed, whilst on other occasions you can see the perspective of their employer and give suitable advice and the benefit of your own experience. But it’s a lonely environment these days for a young person trying to make their way at work, particularly in the era in which we reside where working in an office alongside colleagues and with leaders is less prevalent. Don’t always assume they are getting advice from family and friends – many are having to make it up as they go along. My son, aged 19, is an employee of my business and a fine job he is doing. I’m proud of him, but also cautious of what he will walk into if and when he works for a different company. I’m making the most of being able to guide him a little, based on my own experience, as I think there will be less tutelage and support available to him when he makes his way in his career, than I benefited from back in the day.
I also believe that as an industry we’re less clear these days about what constitutes success from young people, even those who are on formal development programmes. Cynically, I would suggest that an ability not to ruffle feathers, to be conservative, cautious, risk averse and to say the right thing, savvy with spreadsheets and good at glitzy PowerPoint slides is more important than being entrepreneurial, quirky and innovative. Keep your head down. But equally, with fewer role models around, it’s difficult to glean great characteristics from others. Where success is actually managed, it’s done so in a cloned, stultified, procedural way – some bland Performance Appraisal process that could be completed with anodyne catchphrases by Chat GPT. This does nothing to stimulate open and honest discussions around an individual’s strengths, weaknesses and development plan.
A few months later they suddenly lament the lack of talent in the organisation, despite sleepwalking them out of the business
I come back to my original reference to the role of the HR team. To justify their existence as a support function, they need to get their head out of the sand and not just limit themselves to creating clunky, soul-sapping processes or going AWOL for those on their development programmes, the moment the going gets tough. They skulk off, ensconced in clinical compromise agreement or re-organisation territory and enforcing contractual clauses, nowhere to be seen for their so-called company proteges and rising stars. A few months later they suddenly lament the lack of talent in the organisation, despite sleepwalking them out of the business.
As the transport industry transitions into a new structure, this selfish abdication of responsibility from its leaders will be more damaging than ever during these uncertain times. It also needs those in second tier roles as well as non-executive directors to challenge poor behaviours. At several organisations on the brink or midst of implosion, too many senior managers must know what is happening is wrong, but they either haven’t the confidence, or they’re too concerned about self-preservation, to question the path being pursued by those at the very top. And yet, as they pose next to their son or daughter on their graduation day, they should reflect for a second on how much graft, emotional and financial investment went into getting them to that proud moment, and how deeply sad they would be if they then went on to experience the treatment that their company is dishing out to young employees. The time has come for change. This laissez-faire approach to developing and retaining talent must stop right now. It’s a disgrace.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alex Warner has over 30 years’ experience in the transport sector, having held senior roles on a multi-modal basis across the sector. He is co-founder of recruitment business Lost Group and transport consultancy AJW Experience Group (which includes Great Scenic Journeys). He is also chair of West Midlands Grand Rail Collaboration and chair of Surrey FA.
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