Abu Siddeeq

Said the following about Jason Ness:

“Jason is the epitome of a great leader. He has a natural, warm, honest and fair way of dealing with his team and everyone that he comes into contact with. There are countless examples of where his leadership skills have shone through over the past five years that I have worked with Jason. In summary, there are a few things that jump out to me, which make Jason stand out from the crowd.

Jason is:

– Never shy in taking on any task that he asks his team to do. He is usually the first to roll up his sleeves and get involved in tackling any problems or issues

– He is honest. I have even had feedback about how Jason can disarm the most irate of customers with his sheer honesty and effortless charm. He doesn’t try to outwit or outsmart people – he simply accepts how they feel, acknowledges and validates those feelings and then moves to focus to how he will make things better for them

– Someone who always spots potential within those that work for him. Jason has a very good eye for spotting talent, and then nurturing it. The mark of a good leader, for me, is that he or she is surrounded my many other Leaders – and Jason is certainly that. One look at his current and previous team members, and it’s obvious that Jason nurtures and grows the leaders within his team – he is not threatened by this, he uses it to his and GWR’s advantage

– Always calm. One of Jason’s greatest leadership qualities is that even when there is a crisis, be it an incident on our Railway or across FG (Jason is a key member of the Incident Response Team) Jason is always cool, calm and collected. This allows him to think rationally and appear in control. He does not panic at all – and this rubs off on his team, who react in a similarly focussed fashion

As for specific examples of these behaviours, I can list out countless examples of where Jason’s leadership has been key in delivering a good outcome:

After the transition to a new outsourced contact centre partner, Jason sacrificed a lot of his own personal time, away from his wife and young daughter, to help the team in Runcorn become more familiar with their new workload. He spent weeks on end away and worked all hours, supporting Nicole and others within his team, who were facing a vastly increased workload over a short period of time. Jason did not become intimidated by the size of the challenge and nor did he run away and absolve himself of responsibility. Jason did the opposite and grabbed the issues as they came up, and made sure that there was action and improvements put in place after the initial major issues that arose.

I recall Jason helping out a couple of times as part of the Incident Care Team. Once more, these have been situations which are stressful and upsetting for all involved. Jason, with his calm demeanour, has responded to each of these by ensuring that his workload is covered, and that he allows himself to become immersed in the needs of affected customers and their families. He has been a leader, and a personality needed in these types of situations where answers and certainty are much needed, but can be lacking, especially in the immediate aftermath of an event.

As mentioned above, Jason has a habit of finding and building upon the natural leadership ability of others. His team has a number of leaders, who have shown that they too can step up and take on additional responsibility. I am convinced that this is partly because of how easy Jason makes things look, but also because they all know that if and when things become difficult or if they are struggling, they know they are fully supported and honest mistakes will always be forgiven. I have had chats with people in Jason’s team over the past few years and it inevitably comes up at some point that one of the main reasons that people don’t want to leave the Customer Relations team is because they don’t want to leave Jason’s team.

Jason has demonstrated therefore that he is both a “good guy” but also a highly competent, knowledgeable and respected professional both within GWR and within the wider Rail industry.

Jason displays all of the FG values in his role as GWR Customer Support Manager. He is hugely committed to our customers. Jason will often work long hours and take ownership of difficult conversations as he knows that customers are fundamental to what we are here to do. Often, when customers are speaking with Jason, they have already exhausted a number of other channels and therefore Jason is the very last chance opportunity for us to change a customer’s perception of the organisation and on the vast majority of these instances, Jason can win these customers round, through using a lot of empathy, listening skills, and being focussed on resolving issues as they arise. He is also well respected across GWR, meaning that when he has feedback to give back within the organisation, it is received and acted upon. Jason’s passion and desire to support the Capita contact centre is also commendable as he recognised that the team required more support than had been initially anticipated, and he made a number of personal sacrifices to make sure that they received that support, through engaging with managers and team members over a number of months, across a variety of shift patterns.

Jason is hugely committed to setting the highest standards and he recently demonstrated his desire to improved quality standards across customer contact, by writing a business case to increase the size of his own team, to alleviate some of the pressure on the Capita team. The case was overwhelmingly approved by both GWR Board and FG Board as it was written in such a compelling and convincing fashion. Jason had taken note of the changes within the industry meaning that a new ombudsman would come in and rather than simply waiting to see what would happen, he took control and composed a business case to try and mitigate some of the impact of this change. This showed both a significant amount of leadership and conviction, but also a desire to continue to deliver high standards and being personally accountable for improving performance.

Other supportive information, including feedback from colleagues or customers

Jason has a huge fan club within GWR. He has a rare quality of being liked and respected by everyone he comes across within the organisation. His team are particularly strong advocates of his leadership style and personality as they work closely with him, and it makes me proud to work with Jason, as he inspires me in how I manage and work with my own team. I’ve had conversations with customers who tell me how upset they were before they spoke with Jason and how well he managed to understand their issues and how he worked hard to turn their perception around.

Jason works particularly closely with the External Comms and Stakeholder Management teams as he recognises the importance and impact of his own role and that of his team, and he is always keen to protect the reputation of GWR in the public domain. Only recently, when there was a stranded train on the network, Jason jumped into his “auto-pilot” mode, took control, created a firm action plan and delivered against it. At no point, was there any sense that things were not in control – as Jason was clearly dealing with matters.

I can also recall a number of situations where Jason has gone out of his way to support other TOCs, even where there is no benefit in doing for Jason or his team. A recent example would be when he took ownership of a Scotrail-related complaint, which related to the previous franchise (when operated by FirstGroup). Jason owned the complaint and completely supported his counterpart in Scotrail. When I asked Jason why he had done so, his response was that he hoped that the customer would have a more positive view of Rail in general and, if there was a small chance that the customer may ever travel on GWR, he would want to leave a positive and lasting impression.

Jason, and people like Jason, who just have raw passion for GWR and for their roles within the company, are what inspire me to try harder every day. He treats everyone with respect and courtesy and has a vast and admirable level of knowledge about the organisation. He is a very resilient and strong person, who really thrives under pressure. Over five years, I have never once seen Jason’s performance or commitment dip – if that isn’t inspiration, I don’t know what is.“