The team at National Express West Midlands’ Yardley Wood depot have won a business-wide award for safety.
The depot has reached the highest safety ranking versus its sister garages across the West Midlands and Dundee.
As a result, the team have been awarded the National Express Group Safety Value award by Chief Executive Dean Finch, at a ceremony at the London Transport Museum.
Mark Heffernan, National Express UK Bus Operations and Safety Director, says: “The Yardley Wood team have transformed safety culture and really embraced the partnership working with our drivers and engineering teams.”
John Shaw, National Express West Midlands Operations Manager, says: “As a public transport operator is it our responsibility to ensure our staff and our customers are able to get to where they need to be, safely. The team at Yardley Wood have really pulled together to transform our local safety culture and improve our KPIs.
“Working cohesively across departments, as well as with our drivers, has massively improved our standards and helped us slingshot forward to become safety leaders in our business. We’re really pleased that the hard work is paying off and we’re absolutely over the moon with our award.”
Under John’s leadership, the Yardley Wood team are now safety KPI leaders. 100% of drivers are coached on time and over 97% of the coaching is effective. The turnaround demonstrates the team’s commitment to transforming safety.
The operations team have created a productive culture of managing people rather than processes, leading to a positive impact on drivers.
The team has engaged with drivers to gain feedback on duties and rotas, and worked together to introduce improved shift patterns that generate greater work-life balance. It has demonstrated excellent benefits and noticeable improvements for drivers’ health and wellbeing, fatigue levels, absence and their interaction with customers.
In addition, Operations Manager John has forged an effective working partnership with the engineering team, meaning operations and engineering are working even better in unison on site safety, vehicles, near misses, service in and service out.
