TRAINING
but it’s our job to say, ‘If you train your staff, that will help your bottom line’. That’s the way we’re trying to do it.
“In the past, companie s
Tarr said: “There’s probably
no silver bullet in terms of apprenticeships, but light rail is the newer industry and has had a focus in that area. Heavy rail is not seen as a sexy industry to work for, and in the past has focused on older workers: that’s something we’re looking at, a focus on younger workers. They may have concerns that due to age limits, they can’t take younger staff on, but it’s about trying to find a way to take someone early, at a young age, on an apprenticeship, take them down the customer-focused path, and then train them as a driver when they’re slightly older.”
Training and skills
Many different people have a role in training and upskilling the rail workforce: employers, training companies, universities, the Government, sector skills councils themselves, and so on.
Asked where responsibility should lie for tackling the problems with skills identified in the report,
“We believe that more people will choose to travel on our trains if we provide better all-round customer service.”
Tarr said: “It’s the million-dollar question! And it can be quite a political question.
“People 1st has been successful in obtaining a significant amount of funding that is being used to stimulate employers to make changes and then take responsibility themselves for this. Ultimately, the employers have to take responsibility for training,
One unnamed head of training and development at a rail company said: “If you look at our traditional male-oriented
functions,
engineering is heavily male-biased as it is across all industries. Drivers are predominantly male, but there are still a large [number] of female drivers.
I think traditionally it
is a conservative industry and a mix of different people, different genders, or race or background benefits it by removing some of the old fashioned mind-sets of people.”
Employers quoted in the report insist there are no actual barriers to getting more women in the industry – the problem is that too few apply in the first place. They may be expected to say this, of course, as it shifts the problematic gender balance from being their problem to being a problem for women themselves to deal with.
Tarr called the current situation a “missed opportunity”, saying that men and women bring different skills and attitudes to their work and a balanced workforce will benefit an organisation overall. He said: “It’s about career paths,
rail technology magazine Jun/Jul 12 | 29
have felt they’ve had to do it for regulatory reasons: but we’re saying if you do customer-focused training that improves the welfare of your staff, it improves your bottom line as well because it improves the service for passengers.”
Where are the women?
The number of women in rail construction and maintenance is too close to zero for the official statistics to capture, and train driving too is overwhelmingly male: around 96%. Only around 23% of managers in the rail industry are women.
and saying ‘this is a great industry for women’ – whereas in the past, it didn’t have that focus, it’s been seen as a male-orientated industry. But I think, to me, that’s a missed opportunity: there are women who would find it a very exciting career and add value for the company and passenger.”
A successful scheme in the bus industry, Step on the Bus, helping to get unemployed women into bus driving, is being rolled out into the rail industry as Step on the Train, he said.
Interests aligned
Tarr also gave firm backing to NSARE, saying: “Over the last four months, we’ve been building a relationship with Gil Howarth and his team. In some areas, they’ll work with us, and in some areas they’ll work with Semta (the sector skills council for science, engineering and manufacturing technologies). We see our interests as very much aligned.”
Speaking about People 1st’s own role in tackling the skills gaps, he said: “Ultimately, our role begins
with research.
“When we merged with GoSkills, we felt it was critical to do this extended piece of research, so that everything we do is underpinned by research.”
He said key priorities over the next few years include working with employers to look at innovative ways of delivering apprenticeships, promoting the sector as a great place to work and gain qualifications, helping roll out training systems, helping get unemployed people into the industry,
and developing
e-learning training programmes for SMEs.
He said: “The big employers, in many ways, can look after themselves: it’s the smaller and medium-sized employers that don’t know where to go.”
Simon Tarr FOR MORE INFORMATION
The full report is at
tinyurl.com/ SOTN-2012
Image: Network Rail
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