Emma Love

Said the following about HR Team:

“After winning the concession for the Liverpool Street - Shenfield line, work began in September 2014 to recruit the people needed for the launch of the operational railway on 31 May 2015. This gave the HR team just nine months to target, attract, assess, select and appoint the talent needed to get the railway running.

Since then MTR Crossrail has recruited 165 head office staff and 213 front line staff including trainee drivers, qualified drivers, driver team leaders and station staff.

Targeted recruitment for trainee train drivers

An important part of the recruitment campaign was targeting specific groups, such as women and encouraging them to apply for trainee train driver roles.

The HR team worked closely with websites such as www.workingmums.co.uk and www.wearethecity.com to create female-friendly adverts that generated a great deal of interest in this career opportunity. 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 one month.

To date, 14,669 applications have been received for MTR Crossrail’s trainee driver vacancies. 1,511 of these have been from women, who make up 10% of the train driver population.

Setting and achieving high standards

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. The high calibre of candidates selected is already evident with 100% of the first cohort of trainee drivers having passed the first stage of the rigorous programme.

Recruiting from the diverse communities served by the rail network

The HR team recognises that recruiting from the local communities served by the railway is the best way to ensure they gain and retain the best talent. This strategy has ensured the workforce represents these diverse communities with 66.6% of employees living in London.

By using Gumtree to target specific locations on the line, MTR Crossrail’s trainee train driver vacancy on this website received 5,600 hits in a two-week period, a record for this website.

Supporting the future for young people and unskilled candidates

Another under-represented group targeted by the HR team has been unemployed and unskilled candidates, particularly young people who are starting out in the world of work.

MTR Crossrail has committed to engage a minimum of 53 apprentices over the course of its concession in a variety of roles and departments. This is in addition to the 290 trainee train driver apprenticeships that the business offers. MTR Crossrail is industry leading in this respect and is one of only two train operators that have implemented trainee train driver apprenticeships.

Since 2015, the business has hosted five work experience students with six additional placements scheduled over the next three months. The business has seven apprentices in post with five apprentice vacancies currently advertised.

The HR team also works with organisations such as Talent Match which helps young people into work, participating in roundtable discussions to establish what employers can do to help encourage young people to consider work in the transport industry.

Successful recruitment within challenging timescales

The HR team has worked hard within challenging timescales to recruit the people needed to get the railway moving: the deadline the business had to ensure the right people were in post was firmly fixed and there was no option to extend this if recruitment had not gone to plan.

The impact of their work can be seen in the successful delivery and retention of the talent the business needed whilst mobilising the business and essentially creating an organisation from scratch whilst also managing the TUPE transfer of 218 employees.

Creating a highly engaged and motivated workforce

Evidence that the recruitment strategy is paying off can be seen in the high levels of employee engagement. MTR Crossrail’s first employee survey, conducted just six weeks after commencing operations, revealed an engagement score of 93% (July 2015). 94.9% of employees agreed ‘I understand what I can do to help delivery excellent customer service to our customers’ and 93% agreed that ‘MTR Crossrail is a diverse place to work’.

Sickness absence also confirms how motivated employees are and how much they want to be at work with the latest figures showing record attendance at 98.4% across the entire workforce.

A future of growth and expansion at MTR Crossrail

When fully operational, MTR Crossrail will employ up to 1,150 people including 400+ train drivers and over 50 apprentices who will serve 200 million passengers every year on 700 timetabled services through 40 stations. As MTR Crossrail continues to expand every day, the HR team remains committed to a continued focus on building a diverse and progressive pool of talent, in order to deliver a first-class service to passengers.“