The RailStaff Awards 2024

Mike Morgan-Batney

Said the following about Heathrow Express:

“As an open access airport transfer service, Heathrow Express faced unprecedented challenges to both the rail and air travel industries during the COVID pandemic.

2021 was the year that we needed to set out to ‘win the recovery’ following catastrophic impacts to our business finances and colleagues’ wellbeing through the pandemic.

The post-COVID period was already forecast to be a challenging period due to:

1. New competition in the market;

2. Unstable travel markets;

3. Substitute products eroding our markets as people choose to meet digitally;

4. Leisure replacing business travel, eroding our target market;

5. Significant impact to our service from works undertaken for High Speed 2 (HS2)

Whilst we underwent wide ranging steps to reduce costs through the COVID period, we still recorded multi-million-pound losses and we’re forecasting tougher times still in 2022. Despite these losses we were committed to protecting colleagues’ finances as best we could through this period, and made decisions to:

1. Provided a wage ‘top-up’ to £2.5k per month for all of our colleagues while on furlough;

2. Allow colleagues to carry over all of the leave they accrued during the COVID pandemic for 2 years, until 2023;

3. Allow colleagues who had taken on temporary part-time contracts during the COVID pandemic to take on a permanent full-time contract in 2022;

4. Increase the base salary for colleagues, acknowledging that those previously reliant on commission would not be able to enjoy that through our recovery. On average we were able to increase base salaries for frontline colleagues by 17.5%;

In addition we continued to engage with colleagues about their welfare and concerns about returning to work from Furlough, we respond to feedback from our colleagues by working with our union to review and implement a new roster pattern.

In recognition of the contributions our colleagues have made through 2021 we paid a discretionary bonus at the end of March this year and in addition to this have made a commitment to enroll all of our colleagues into a Business Recovery Incentive Plan which has performance targets that our colleagues can influence and provided these are achieved in 2021 and 2022, colleagues will receive their bonus in 2023.

Revamping our colleague’s experience

• Looking to ‘win the recovery’ and ‘build back better’ following the COVID pandemic Heathrow Express made decisions to reorganise and relaunch the below aspects of our employee experience, knowing that colleagues working in a safe, supportive and positive culture would be our very best way to futureproof our brand.

1. Learning and development

Training & Briefings

• In the face of a global pandemic and company restructure, Heathrow Express designed and delivered a Digital Employee Engagement Initiative to transform the employee journey.

• The result was an innovative digital experience that revolutionised training and development using scenario-based learning, bespoke video content and real-life stories.

• Refresher training now happens more frequently and is bespoke to individual needs.

Assessments and on the job coaching

• To reinforce key safety, security and customer service messages from our training, a monthly assessment programme was set up to make sure all colleagues received at least one 1-2-1 assessment and coaching session each month.

• Based on the core competencies of their role each of our colleagues are asked scenario based questions to test their knowledge and understanding.

• In addition to in the moment coaching, assessment results are collated for each individual, so that a tailored refresher training course can be delivered every 6 months.

• If all assessments pass then every colleague in the team (regardless of whether they were assessed or not) receives a commission payment based on the number of hours they worked that week.

• This has led to a good peer-to-peer culture, where colleagues work together to raise standards across the team.

• Colleagues like the assessments as they not only are able to receive commission, but the 1-2-1 session builds confidence in their ability as this a great opportunity to ask questions and test their knowledge in a safe setting.

Development opportunities

• All of our frontline and leadership colleagues have completed 1-2-1 development discussions with their line managers, which has allowed us to understand colleagues’ aspirations and build plans for their futures.

• To aid their understanding of each any every role at HEx we have developed a library of ‘day in the life of…’ videos, which brings JD’s to life and help’s colleagues understand what they can expect to do in roles they aspire to do in the future.

• New roles were created in 2021 to help ease pressure on the existing team and to help create development opportunities for our frontline colleagues.

Communications & Support

• Colleague mentors have been introduced who will help support new starters coming into our business, by working alongside them on a ‘shadowing roster’ for their first few weeks before going onto a permanent roster.

• At the end of inductions certificates are given by the senior leadership team during their ‘passing out ceremonies’.

• To improve communications across the business all colleagues are invited to attend a weekly companywide call with the senior leadership team where business updates are provided in an informal setting and where people are encouraged to ask questions, make suggestions and share feedback.

• The relaunch and increased frequency of our colleague satisfaction surveys was a great way to gauge people’s satisfaction working at Heathrow Express and being able to address anonymous concerns head on.

• Through this period 80% of our colleagues have rated us a great place to work.

Safety & Wellbeing

• Wellbeing and Safety champion volunteers from our frontline now meet with the senior leadership team on a monthly basis to discuss these important topics and bring forward ideas to make positive changes.

• The relaunch of our Employee Assistance Programme means colleagues can get 24/7 free access to trained counsellors, legal and financial professional advice.

• Due to the challenges around COVID specific support for colleagues struggling with mental health and trauma is in place and we have STRAW buddies and the TRiM (Trauma Risk Management) programme available to colleagues 24/7.

• We provided our colleagues with clear COVID masks so that customers could see our colleagues smiles and for assistance with lip-reading.

• Because of concerns around cleanliness, we removed all paper based activities we were asking colleagues to performance and made them all digital.

The results; Greater Colleague and Customer Satisfaction & Improved Business Metrics

The initiatives have had very positive impact on our culture, resulting in:

Colleague metrics

• 13% of our frontline colleagues moving to development opportunity roles

• An 11% drop in leavers from the pre-pandemic records

• Sickness levels at their lowest rates for 4 years

• 80% of our team rating Heathrow Express as a great place to work

• Good positive relationships with our unions, leading to positive changes to colleague’s roster patterns

• A balanced gender pay gap

• Commission and bonus payments made to colleagues

Customer Metrics

• 96% of customers rating our service as either excellent or very good

• Complaints at time low with 0.01% our of passengers who travelled with us complained about their service

• 75% of our social media posts and comments are of a positive sentiment

Business metrics

• Whilst we’re still very much in a financial crisis, our revenue is on the increase and our operating expenditure if down as a result of our people engagement strategy. Customers are choosing to travel with Heathrow Express as the airport mode of choice, with sustainability, tranquillity and customer service as their main reasons for choosing us.“