School leaver apprentice to Guards Manager and Competency Assessor
I left school at the age of 16 with a handful of GCSEs and began a two-year training scheme in British Rail. I graduated in approximately 18 months and gained meaningful full time employment in a customer service role. During my service I have gained lots of experience dealing with the public in a variety of roles. Be that from working in a call centre answering enquiries to working as a supervisor in a busy town centre railway station ticket office. Fast forward 32 years and I find myself in a rewarding management role in a small team of 6 looking after a team of approximately 140.
I manage and assess the competency of a team of train guards
I am responsible for the welfare and competence of a team of approximately 30 Commercial Guards at a busy traincrew depot in Hampshire. I work with a team of 5 other guards managers. I regularly assess the knowledge and competency of my team against the South Western Railway policies and procedures associated with safe train working. I am a qualified assessor to City and Guilds A1 standard. In addition to assuring that my team can work safely, I also undertake regular welfare checks on all. This will include ensuring they are fit to be in the work place as well as managing their attendance and behaviour. As part of my role, my team and colleagues are fully aware that I am in a strong position to develop future talent from within my team. This is achieved through regular one-to-ones. This time is spent gaining an understanding of how my team wish to develop themselves and I use my cross function connections to assist them any ways I can.
Ensuring that my team are competent / compliant to business standards
The main focus for my role is to regularly assess the competency of my team. This is conducted through a series of face-to-face assessments. These are generally conducted in a practical environment where I assure that they are able to work to an acceptable and safe standard. For an experienced employee this will mean that I hold at least 9 assessments over a 3-year competency cycle where all laid out criteria should be assessed and evidenced. These face-to-face assessments allow me to spend time with my team to gain a real understanding of any challenges they are experiencing.
Have the passion and confidence to succeed
My own journey tells a story of wanting to succeed and to ensure that I sought as much guidance and opportunities from as many who are in a position to facilitate that. In a large organisation and a member of a large team, it is easy to be missed and overlooked. By using your own one-to-ones and conversations with your manager and mentors to make them aware of your desire to develop, you are always in their thoughts when ventures arise. This along with grasping all additional learning opportunities will put you in a good place when compared to other candidates.
Being recognised for leading successful projects
I was chosen to lead a project to gain a stronger understanding in how the On Train Service Function suffer from service delays due to the assisting of customers requiring additional help, when boarding and alighting our trains. As a business we have introduced assisted boarding points to allow customers to request assistance at much later notice. These points are situated in key positions on our stations and allow the customer to ask for help when they arrive at our stations. My responsibilities involved visiting key locations which suffer from the effects of late notice booking to understand and evidence to the senior leadership team why these delays were occurring and different ideas that could be implemented to combat them. These highlighted issues ranged from the boarding points being ill-placed when installed or the guard not being made aware that the customer wanted assistance and being located in a sub-optimal location on the train when it arrived at the station.
