I see that some of my erstwhile colleagues have walked out on strike over “career progression”. Someone more cynical might just take a peek at the calendar and say to themselves, “yeah, whatever…”
What struck me about this story is the reason for the walkout.
The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union claims Network Rail managers have ripped up an arrangement which had been in place for more than 30 years where staff were “slotted” into a post when it became vacant.
Network Rail said the union wanted a signaller removed from his post before it would negotiate. It said resolving a dispute before the Christmas rush was made “impossible” by the stance of the RMT.
We had that argument in 1994 when the industry was privatised. One of Railtrack’s first targets was the old promotion on seniority arrangements. They were right. I recall supervisors who were wholly unfit to supervise others, yet got their jobs because they had been in post for long enough to be the next person to fill dead men’s shoes. Railtrack wanted to promote people on the basis of suitability – i.e they wanted a competence based system and set about implementing it. This meant that while someone might have less signalling experience than those they were managing, they had the relevant soft skills and management ability – because, and this is crucial, their main job is to manage not work the box. Where promotion was simply to a higher grade box, it might well be that the less experienced person is actually more competent in the role and therefore, more suited to the promotion. The union should be supporting such arrangements. Again, I recall someone who was promoted to a high grade power box who finally went to pieces because he couldn’t cope – yet was very senior in the structure. Is the union really saying that it wants people promoted who are not suitable or cannot cope with the extra stresses of their new role? Really?
The unions didn’t much like the idea of competence based promotion back in 1994 and it seems they still don’t. It does surprise me that there is still dispute about it getting on for twenty years later, though.
Bob Crow:
“That disruption is regrettable but entirely down to Network Rail’s failure to abide by long-standing local career progression agreements.”
The best career progression agreement you can have is where the most suitable person for the role is appointed.
“Is the union really saying that it wants people promoted who are not suitable or cannot cope with the extra stresses of their new role? Really?”
It appears so. But then, the union thinks about what’s best for the union, not for the job…
Yes, and I didn’t understand it twenty yeas ago. Especially having first hand experience of it going horribly wrong.
“The Peter Principle” is still alive and un-well after more than 30 years!
It is.
I have never understood why supervising should be considered more ‘responsible’ than actually doing the job, it is a different job but why does the organisational hierarchy need to be matched by a pay pyramid?
The chairman of BT once justified increasing his own salary on the basis that it provided ‘headroom’ to pay skilled people more further down the pyramid – but why does the chairman have to be paid top whack? His role could have been carried out by anyone with the skill to manage meetings, or do we only ‘respect’ someone if they are paid more than us (ha!)?
A supervisory role usually carries greater responsibility, hence higher in the hierarchy and greater pay – although not always. When I went from signaller to signalling manager, my net pay dropped although my basic was higher.
I have been working at the same firm now for twenty six years. There are now only a handful of people who have worked there longer than I have. My job is fixing things. I like fixing things. I like to think that I am very good at fixing things. I would be hopeless as a manager and, no matter how good the money was, I would hate being one. If my company operated this kind of system it follows that I would be a fairly senior manager in the company by now. Of course, not being subsidised by the government, operating this kind of system would have caused them to go out of business by now.
It’s not that different on the railways, I’ve worked in the job for thirty five years and only applied for actual promotion twice and that was over thirty years since now , the rest of the time I’ve just gone with the flow and only been upgraded when the job was, I’m only about two grades higher than when I got my first signalman’s post in 1978 ( there are now nine grades, two more than when I started ). I’ve never had the slightest ambition to move into a supervisory or management position, there’s a lot of people like me and no one is or was promoted automatically just because it’s their turn.
What really suprises me is that the railways, of all people are STILL doing this.
Didn’t they learn from the disatrous “promoton-by-seniority” fiasco in the LMS 1925-30, with the amiable, but useless (in that particular post) (Sir) Henry Fowler as CME?
It surprises me, too.
Some years ago one of the local managers asked a group of signalling managers what made a good signaller. We all had slightly different ideas, but when it came down to it, we were identifying the ability to read a situation, to react quickly and effectively, to be able to plan ahead and communicate effectively – and, importantly, to multi-task. None of us said “the most senior”. That’s because experience will hone those with the relevant skills. Those without may develop some of them, but never to the same degree as someone who already has the relevant attributes. The same principle applies to line managers and supervisors. The most senior signaller being promoted to a supervisory grade when they lack the relevant underpinning attributes is a disaster waiting to happen.
You’re contradicting yourself slightly there, if experience hones innate abilities, which it does, then promoting people on the basis of seniority makes a degree of sense. You can be very competent without much experience but until you’ve been through the mill a bit new situations, which occur on the railway all the time, are likely to wrong foot you.
No, I’m not. Experiences can only do so much. Without those underlying attributes on its own it is not sufficient – I can recall people who were poor signallers after decades of experience and I’m sure you can as well. That said, yes, a certain amount of experience is necessary for some roles – but not all.
My point being, promotion on the basis of seniority is wrong on so many levels.
Hmm, a few things here. First the old Promotion Transfer and Redundancy agreements weren’t actually replaced at the 1994 restructuring, that’s something the management have always claimed but it isn’t so, whether they should have been rather than having extra, sometimes contradictory conditions tacked on, is another matter. Anyway this strike appears to be over a local rather than national agreement, this has happened in one or two other places where the local management seem to be at odds with the staff, as I don’t work in one of those places and we’ve generally not had too many problems of this nature in my area I don’t really see this as a dinosaurs v progressives thing, more a clash of personalities, which is more common than it used to be with staff being concentrated in large power boxes.
Second, the old buggins turn way of doing things had a lot wrong with it but so does the ‘suitability’ approach which too often means ‘if your face fits’, the wrong people can still too easily get promoted and not just to management. We’ve recently had an example of this at my workplace where one of our staff reps, who is perhaps the best signalman I’ve ever known ( and I’ve known him for thirty years ) has been twice turned down for promotion to a higher grade box, basically because the management don’t like him, he’s too good at his jobs, both as signaller, which makes them feel inferior and as staff rep because they get embarrassed when he does that job properly and they aren’t able to rail road ( sorry ) things through as they’d like. This is actually to their advantage as he and the other reps often save them from doing daft things that would work to their own disadvantage, he isn’t militant or a troublemaker, far from it, just honest and conscientious and would actually make a very good shift manager in one of the big boxes ( we have some of the busiest in the country in this area ) and for this he is being punished. The way of the world I know but please don’t tell me the management are good at recognising the right people for jobs, it’s just as hit and miss as it always was.
It certainly disappeared in my part of the world. And, yes, I did see unsuitable people being promoted. That, however, is not a problem with the principle of promotion on the basis of suitability but one with incompetent recruitment and selection. Something of a problem in Network Rail in my experience.
Actually, a good manager does recognise the right people for the right jobs. It’s a part of the basic attributes necessary for management. You can read into that comment what you wish 😉
A further example from my own experience. One of our LOMs is a fairly new entrant to the industry, he worked one low grade uncomplicated box before getting promotion, rumour has it he was related to someone close to Ian Coucher, he knows next to nothing about signalling and is not able to pass out people for all the boxes in his area. He is particularly poor with the rules, having dropped several clangers and nearly caused an accident when he failed to examine a bridge properly after a lorry hit it, he’s also a bit of a bully. I’ve actually always got on OK with him as I refused from the start to put up with any nonsense and he tends to defer to the old hands like me, preferring to push the newer people around. He’s actually very good at getting things like box repairs done and that’s the sort of job he should be doing, he’s just not suited to being a man manager particularly of signallers. Suitability ? Not one of its greatest triumphs there.
See my above comment. Because people game a system doesn’t make the system itself wrong. People should always be promoted into a role on the basis of their fitness to carry it out, not because they are the next in line and certainly not because of nepotism.
When I went into a panel box, I was recruited directly from outside the industry. Conventional wisdom said that outsiders could not be recruited into such a role without experience and work the box effectively. Conventional wisdom was proved to be wrong.
People gaming the system will always happen and that was my point really, one system is not inherently any more likely to work well than another, it’s the processes around it that count. In the past with a lot of different grades and routes to promotion people generally tended to gravitate towards the posts they were most suited to and there were a number of quite subtle ways that unsuitable people were kept out of supervisory positions, it used for instance to be common to find people in those posts who were hard faced bastards but very good at their jobs, the first Area Inspector I worked under was like that. It was also the case that if you did something really stupid you were generally taken out of the box and often sacked, nowadays it seems virtually impossible to do either. There is nothing about choosing people on the basis of suitabilty, when the criteria for what that constitutes is so subjective, that will automatically make it a superior way of appointing people.
That’s just it, it’s not subjective. Competence is measurable – which is why we have occupational standards. The problem here is that like many organisations, the competence management regime doesn’t extend to recruitment and selection.
The only appropriate system is one where people are selected on suitability for the role and no other consideration is included.
Having been on the receiving end of these systems this past couple of years, I’ve noticed that FGW, for example, take the whole thing much more seriously than NWR. Their recruitment and selection regime is pretty strict and they apply the process rigorously.
Selection based upon the requirements of the post and appointing people who match the competence criteria is vastly superior to using seniority as a means. That people game the system is merely evidence that the competence management regime is not being applied, it is not a judgement on the principle and using seniority as an alternative is not the right response. The right response is to do something about those who recruit and select incompetently…
Sorry but in my experience and that of everyone else I work with and know on the railway, including people at the other end of the country, subjectivity and box ticking rule in NR competency testing, my manager told me what answers to put the last time I did it, which was amusing as he got some of it wrong and I had to correct him a couple of times. We are supposed to do a simulation on a laptop with all the attendees role playing, I was the only one there so we didn’t do that, again the manager told me what to do, including mistaking a tunnel for a level crossing ! The exercise itself was a farce a totally improbable situation involving a load shifting on a freight train at the same time as a broken axle, somehow the whole thing ( which involved two possessions ) was cleared up in half an hour and the train’s injuries miraculously healed, farcical. This farrago replaced the ‘Cognisco’ testing which was universally despised and derided for its nonsense questions and nit picking, we were constantly being instructed by the briefers on how to cheat. We also have a full scale panel and lever frame simulator which has stood mostly idle since it was installed, we don’t even have an instructor for it.
As for recruitment and promotion, if the whole culture, of which the above is typical, is flawed then it doesn’t matter how good the procedures are in principle it won’t work properly. One thing that has happened recently is that HR no longer attend interviews for promotion ( not sure about recruitment ), I have a low opinion of HR but at least they were a disinterested party with a reason to stick to the procedures, now it’s all done by a couple of managers who can decide who gets the job according to their own whims, the case of my colleague I mentioned above being typical, we all knew who had got two of the five jobs going before the interviews were held. Your commitment to doing things properly is commendable but I’m afraid its not typical, a bit like the churchgoer who embarrasses the congregation by suggesting that Jesus’s teachings be taken seriously or the socialist who believes that Marxist theory can alter human behaviour.
You aren’t telling me anything I don’t already know here. Because Network Rail does not operate an effective competence management system does not make the principle wrong, it merely means that Network Rail is incompetent.
Yes, I noticed this. It means that people who have no understanding or training in recruitment and selection are making poor decisions and in some cases asking poor and unfair questions. Whereas, people who understand the competence indicators will be testing the candidates against the competence indicators for the role – which is how it should happen. And, broadly in my experience, it is what the rest of the industry is moving towards, even if they aren’t always getting it spot on.
Competence management starts with recruitment and selection – i.e everyone involved in the process must be competent to carry out the task. As line managers are not occupational experts, then they should have some basic training and ongoing support from those who are – HR. This happened in the early days of Railtrack because I had that training and support and was able to make some sound recruitment decisions. That it isn’t happening simply tells me that Network Rail is, again, talking the talk but failing to walk the walk. Quelle surprise.
One of my criticisms of the Q12 farce is that it started from the wrong end. You start with selecting suitable people into line management and HR roles and then provide the relevant training and support to enable them to function efficiently. You also have in place sufficient supervision to stamp out the kind of practices you mention. Everything else flows from that. It is possible to have a proper functioning competence management system. Once in place, you may from time to time make a recruitment mistake. Using seniority as a process, it’s a matter of when, not if you over promote someone. I haven’t forgotten the BR days when most of the supervisors I came across hadn’t a clue about people management and managed their charges as they had been managed themselves – badly.
And, yes, I am aware of the systematic cheating that goes on – everyone out on the track knows about it. It’s the worlds worst kept secret. We have to abide by Network Rail rules that they choose to ignore. Again, underlines my point, Network Rail does not have a competence management system in place. It’s a disgrace. They damned well should.
Indeed they should but they don’t and there’s little sign of any intention to change, in fact I think it will get worse, this is one of the reasons why people will cling to established work patterns and defend them even when they are probably indefensible, which was my criticism of some of your original post. Those outside the industry have little idea of the Byzantine ways of the railway and consequently have a ‘Bob Crow – bastard, workers greedy’ take on the job, which like all such simplistic views is wildly inaccurate, I’ve just been trying to correct one of them over at Tim Worstall’s place.
They came close in the wake of the Paddington crash. Cullen made a series of recommendations regarding competence which the TOCs implemented – their simulators are used and their driver training regimes are pretty strict. Network Rail decided that it couldn’t be bothered because it would all cost too much and what you see is the half arsed outcome.
When there is a major incident as a consequence of signaller error caused by poor training/supervision/assessment, then they will be forced to do something. until then, complacency will rule. And, yes it could happen. I had a whole pile of near miss reports caused by signallers on my desk in the latter days of my Network Rail career. The response generally was “we’ve got away with it for 150 years, so no need to do anything now”. Yes, really, that was said at a high level meeting designed to look at Cullen recommendations – in that case, training and assessment of new signallers in the live environment.