THE CHANGING FACE THE GROWING NUMBER OF WOMEN IN OUR TRADE
I was at the Imperial War Museum in Manchester recently and looking around the room of delegates who numbered over 300 members of the taxi trade I was impressed at how smart all the men looked in their black tie apparel and how beautiful the women looked in the their cocktail dresses. At my table of ten were six of my colleagues, five women from our admin department and the owner Barry Denton. Sitting with us was Happicabs, Chelmsford.
We had a great night and good company – shout out to Happicabs for being such fun, despite us both being up for the same award which is an accolade to have been shortlisted for, especially during Covid. However, it very quickly dawned on me how male dominated the industry continues to be. The mix on our table of five women differed from other tables. The rest of the room must have been an 80/20 split with the 80% being male. It got me wondering… how did I end up in this male dominated trade? Why are there not more women? How can we encourage more women into the trade?
I started reminiscing…..
Looking back I have always been a ‘girly’ girl, always dressing in pink, pink wallpaper in my room, pink Sony Walkman, I played with Sindy and Barbie dolls. However, no one thing defines us, I also loved Scalextric and vividly remember how I begged my parents to buy me a ‘Roadmaker’ which was a jigsaw puzzle of roads to be able to drive cars around on it. Was it this part of me that loved the taxi business from the moment I set foot in the door of AAA over nine years ago, in intially joining for only 15 hours a week?
From December 2012, when I joined AAA, I found the whole business exciting. From the different personalities and cultural backgrounds of the drivers, to the interesting customers who walked in to our offices; the corporate companies we worked for to the local authority journeys we serviced. I loved it all. Never had I felt so in tune with the ‘everyday’ lives of so many people, understood how a service industry could be so ewarding, so entertaining at times and so important to a wide variety of people daily.
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I very quickly threw myself into all aspects of the trade, I offered to cover shifts evenings and weekends, became a controller and rose to the challenge of revolu- tionising the way we operate. Most enjoyable to me was working on our despatch system ‘Cordic’ to enable it to become fully automated. I am in awe of the software and what can be achieved through configuration. We have had to adapt our business model rapidly, with changes that were imposed by market disruptors, such as Uber, changes in licensing laws such as cross border hiring, and fluctuating supply and demand.
My progression from a part-time bookkeeper to Business Manager had challenges. Learning licensing legislation to ensure compliancy took time, as did transitioning the company from a very driver led, manual operation to a modern app based, automated system. These changes were initially met with resistance. I got things wrong, made mistakes and learned from them, but boy have I enjoyed the journey.
It has been so enjoyable seeing our driver numbers, account work and other statistics more than double. Currently, post Covid, AAA carry out around 15,000 jobs per week and transport over 300 students from home to school daily. To what can I attribute the success of AAA? I would not be where I am today without the full support of Barry Denton, owner and Director, he has been our champion, our pace setter and progress chaser.
It was Barry who enthused us to keep services running throughout Covid lockdowns when other operators were closing. Barry and I acknowledge that Uber disrupting the market has led to many changes in our approach, which have been for the better in terms of automation and price. Many in the industry see Uber as the enemy, we have seen their business model as one to be admired in several ways, although being acutely aware we need our wits about us to compete with them.
In contrast to Uber, we have always been determined to keep a human face at the forefront of our business for both the drivers and customers. Joining trade associations such as the NPHTA and the Institute of Licensing and having good legal support (shout out to our expert solicitor Antony Schiller) has helped AAA keep abreast of updates. However,
JANUARY 2022
it goes without
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