Robert Johnson

Said the following about MTR Crossrail Recruitment Team:

“MTR Corporation (Crossrail) Limited will be the operator of the new Elizabeth line, having been awarded the concession by Transport for London (TfL). The route will pass through 41 stations from Reading and Heathrow in the west, through new tunnels to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east. MTR Crossrail has the responsibility of ensuring it provides an inclusive service for all customers.

MTR Crossrail’s aims and objectives from the outset were challenging: to effectively build a new business from scratch overnight once the contract was awarded in July 2014 and sustain continuous growth until full operation in December 2019.

This gave the HR department, in partnership with the Operations team, just nine months to target, attract, assess, select and appoint the talent needed to get the railway running before the deadline.

By 2019, MTR Crossrail will have expanded to 1150 total staff, including both head office and front line employees. The recruitment plan continues as the service continually expands as part of the Staged Opening Programme. The next challenge that the organisation faces will be the recruitment of a further 150 customer experience staff to support the smooth running of the central operating system (tunnel section).

The framework for the recruitment strategy was based around the company’s Staged Opening Programme. This Programme details the various stages of the Elizabeth line, as sections open from east London, through the central tunnel section, linking with Heathrow Airport and continuing right through to Reading by December 2019. This plan, more importantly, set out the various personnel milestones and staffing requirements for the next few years. This included the TUPE transfer of 207 staff from Abellio Greater Anglia in 2015, and the TUPE transfer of 59 Great Western staff and 7 South Eastern Rail staff in 2017. Once the recruitment planning was finalised, cross-functional working between the various departments within MTR Crossrail became an integral part of ensuring the right people were brought into the business.

The HR department worked closely with all functions within the business, specifically Operations and Customer Experience, to formulate recruitment requirements and to discuss targeted drives for these positions.

Attracting Females to the Industry

A key part of recruiting for a new business was for the position of trainee train drivers. Drivers represent nearly 50% of the entire MTR Crossrail workforce and the specialist nature of the role means that assessment and selection criteria are challenging, with only the best candidates being successful.

Since 2015 there has been a conscious drive from MTR Crossrail to attract more females to apply for these roles. In the past, this has been a male-dominated environment nationally, but there has been a proactive shift at MTR Crossrail towards gender inclusion.

MTR Crossrail has revolutionised the way in which it advertises to potential new drivers. The recruitment team developed a targeted campaign to encourage more women to apply for trainee train driver roles. The campaign featured a video of female train drivers discussing the benefits of the role, and how their career functioned alongside their family commitments and other responsibilities.

MTR Crossrail is now in an ongoing partnership with workingmums.co.uk and wearethecity.com to develop a female-friendly recruiter page for MTR Crossrail. The campaign on Working Mums generated the highest number of hits for any vacancy in the website’s history, with over 9,000 hits in a month.

The team also used Gumtree to target specific locations along our railway line. This led to MTR Crossrail’s trainee train driver vacancy receiving 5,600 hits in a two-week period, a record for this website.

MTR Crossrail is invested in gaining relevant feedback on its recruitment process. It arranged lunches for its successful female applicants to attend HQ in order for them to meet each other and discuss their experiences with the MTR Crossrail application process. This gave the organisation the chance to hone and enhance the recruitment process and ensure that every applicant felt equally valued.

MTR Crossrail believes in the importance of sharing best practice, both within its own organisation and to others which might be experiencing similar issues. The company consequently hosted a Women’s Networking event to share best practice on attracting more females into the industry, and sought advice from MTR Melbourne, following their Australian partner’s recent success in attracting female drivers. As a result of MTR Crossrail’s focus on gender diversity, they were invited to present at ASLEF’s annual event: an impressive achievement.

MTR Crossrail recognises the intrinsic value of young people and is consequently working to inspire the younger generation to pursue a career in rail.

MTR Crossrail continues to work closely with Young London Working, promoting opportunities via their website and network of local youth organisations. To date, three of the organisation’s current apprentices first heard about MTR Crossrail’s employment opportunities though accessing Young London Workings pre-employment support service.

Diversity

MTR Crossrail is committed to creating a diverse working environment where there are equal opportunities for all; an aim which is apparent in its recruitment process. It has worked with organisations such as Transitions as well as holding employability events with Crisis and working with Working Chance to support ex-offenders getting back into work.

This recruitment diversity can perhaps be best witnessed through a comparison between MTR Crossrail’s statistics of its train drivers, and those collated by ASLEF as representative of the industry more widely. In the wider rail industry, only 6% of train drivers are female, compared to 12.8% at MTR Crossrail. In terms of racial diversity, 5% of train drivers nationally are Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME), compared to 28.1% of drivers at MTR Crossrail. Finally, only 10% of drivers nationally are aged 35 and under, compared to a massive 47% at MTR Crossrail.

Successful Approach

MTR Crossrail’s recruitment success is not limited merely to diversity, but is also defined by a tangible increase in driver quality.

To date, 20871 applications have been received for MTR Crossrail’s trainee train driver vacancies with 2,292 of these from women.

Of the 20871 applications received for this vacancy, 270 trainee drivers have been recruited as a result of this targeted recruitment.

Measurable Success

Since commencing operations on 31 May 2015, the calibre of drivers MTR Crossrail has recruited has ensured that the main performance indicator, Public Performance Measure (PPM) Moving Annual Average (MAA) has risen from 91.21% (end of Period 2 2015/16) to 94.52% (Period 10 2017/18), an increase of 3.31%. This consistent performance has seen the railway achieve the best right-time operator in the UK on a number of occasions and is a credit to the calibre of staff brought on board by the recruitment team.

In 2017, MTR Crossrail won both the Best Right Time Operator at the Golden Whistle Awards and the Operator of the Year at the London Transport Awards. These accolades are a result of the quality of the candidates, and the value which they have brought to MTR Crossrail.“