In June the first cohort of trainees began a funded coach driver training programme designed by Coatham Coaches. Is this the future for coach driver recruitment?
For coach operators, traditional means of driver recruitment typically involves advertising, social media, word of mouth, and additional training for those who have signed up from the bus or HGV world. Is a dedicated coach driver training programme – designed to instil coach driving skills and flexible means of working from the very beginning – a better way to retain a workforce and provide the steady stream of drivers the industry needs?
In North Yorkshire, Coatham Coaches may soon have the answer.
Recruitment and retention
While Coatham Coaches has enjoyed good staff retention over the years, a number of its drivers are approaching retirement age. And like most coach operators, Coatham has fringe drivers who choose not refresh their Driver CPC when the time comes for renewal. The question invariably is how to find replacements for those drivers.
While the company gets a good stream of applicants from the bus sector looking for new opportunities, Managing Director Mark Hodgson was keen to tailor a recruitment programme suited to the coach sector to break a reliance on bus drivers.
“We have struggled and everyone’s got gaps in employment,” Mark says. “If you speak to any coach operator in the country, it can take on new drivers. Social media shows that everyone is looking for qualified drivers. The difference at the minute is that the coach operators are trying to stress that they are looking for good quality, well-trained drivers. We’re trying to be a bit more self-sufficient.”
Coach driver training schemes are not a new concept, and many family operators provide opportunities for drivers to train in-house within the company through paid-for training. The situation for Coatham Coaches and Mark came through an awareness of impending job losses as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and takes a slightly different approach by using a local college funding stream – provided by Redcar and Cleveland Adult Learning Service working as partners with Redcar and Cleveland College – and looking at driver recruitment as a learning initiative.
The first cohort of five candidates began training on 28 June. The course is hands-off, allowing for drop-in sessions with the college over the training period, which is flexible to the level of experience on the part of the candidate – experienced HGV drivers may only need six weeks of training while those fresh to driving may require longer. Coatham acts as a mediator and looks after booking theory tests, medicals and online theory training, while the college handles recruitment and basic skills to ensure candidates are equipped to take the course.
Up to 40 hours of driver training is promised with an instructor – a local driver trainer delivers driver training and the basics of a walk-round check and mechanics of the coach. An optional work trial allows candidates to come on site to see the fleet first hand, where the premises are, and develop a personal tie-in with Coatham Coaches.
New approach
Historically, funding for coach driving as a vocational qualification has proved a sticking point. That led Mark to approach a number of local colleges and argue that, if logistics and haulage licences can be funded through a college course, the coach sector should be able to tap into the same stream. COVID-19 has proved advantageous in this regard, with local authorities keen to invest into job opportunities in anticipation of redundancies following the winding up of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.
“During COVID-19 lots of colleges, local authorities and combined authorities have dedicated money to retrain and upskill people,” Mark explains. “On the crest of that wave, I managed to get in touch with the right people at the right time. Through the pandemic coach operators have been speaking to each other more, so it’s been a good opportunity to get a little bit of buy-in and build a case for each kind of application to the college for the funding.”
The relationship is two-way, and before the college was prepared to introduce such a course and provide funding, it needed to see statistics on how many jobs the coach sector really has to offer.
With the industry being made up of many smaller independents, that task is not so simple as it is for, say, the bus sector – so Mark stresses the need for a combined voice and that this is not just Coatham Coaches asking for support – it is the area of Redcar and Cleveland, Teesside, even the North East as a whole.
Naturally, newly trained drivers can find work up and down the country. For Mark that’s where those new relationships with operators have borne fruit – that shows evidence that there are jobs available, and that operators do need support.
An ideal scenario would be to take the funding template built with Redcar and Cleveland College – a six- to eight-week programme focussed around providing a candidate with basic skills, putting them through a medical, theory test and practical driving – and present this to any coach operator across the country through a trade association such as the Confederation of Passenger Transport or RHA. To that end, some interest has already been demonstrated, as well as by at least one local authority.
“We need a national approach that can be replicated throughout the country,” Mark adds. “Because all the funding pockets are localised, our funding stream in Teesside might be different to a funding stream in London or one in the West Midlands. If what we have done in Teesside can be picked up by an operator elsewhere as a template which it can then present to its local college, that’s where I see the future of the programme.”
The scheme is targeted to those who are unemployed or out of education, or anyone earning less than ÂŁ17,500 per annum. Minimum requirements to sign up are a car licence, medical and an enhanced DBS check.
Other benefits for Coatham include the ability to draw some income from the driver hire and coach hire for the training – but the primary benefit of course is that the scheme delivers employees directly into the coach industry. Mark says the template may need some tinkering – this first cohort will demonstrate what works well and where improvements could be made – but by and large it should work as a fit for almost any coach operator in the country. Because funding streams are localised, operators can only apply for funding within local areas, where they can guarantee local jobs. Replicating the funding and its outcomes will be the most important thing to consider. “Every piece of funding comes with caveats, and that generally has been job offers,” Mark explains. “At the minute, the only outcome the college and the local authority want to see is job opportunities – a promise of an interview. Previously, this was a job offer – that’s a big change and is making the situation a lot more flexible for the coach industry.”
Flexibility is one of the coach industry’s unique selling points. The sector still fits the outcomes for the college in the sense that opportunities exist, and the job may even prove more attractive to alternatives such as haulage because of flexible working hours – as Mark puts it, the industry has a way of working suited to every individual. “Some coach operators would quite happily take on a new member of staff for 10 hours, 20 hours or 30; someone who wants to work Monday to Friday, or just on weekends. And that might suit the candidate’s lifestyle and family circumstances – we have to try and drill that home through the scheme.”
Aims and challenges
Challenges when it comes to driver recruitment still go back to pay, with Mark suggesting coach drivers commonly feel underpaid and undervalued. The industry has to turn that around, but at the very least the promise of guaranteed hours for 52 weeks of the year can make a career in driving more attractive than some zero-hour contracts. The wage competition extends to other vocations and trades and salary expectations associated with them. Mark suggests the industry needs to look at ways for drivers to progress as a lure to the industry: “How do we offer future employment opportunities? Is there a pass to go into management functions rather than be limited to one role? Family businesses have to look towards an answer.”
Getting pay rates up often comes down to getting rates up for hires. And the only way to do that, according to Mark, is to offer a better service. “There is a responsibility for both staff and companies to drive that forwards,” he adds. “We don’t want to exit COVID-19 just to grab work, drop rates and squeeze hourly wages for drivers again. That’s a vicious circle.”
As well as the challenge of rates, getting young people into coaching has long been a question on the industry’s mind. It has already been a learning point for the college, which from its first tranche of candidates admits it may have advertised to the wrong demographic. Applicants have, so far, been experienced, often from the HGV industry and in the 40-50 age bracket. Mark wants to drive that down to see more takeup from 18- to 30-year-olds.
“We want to try and make it a career,” he explains. “We have drivers who have been with us for 25 to 30 years and we’re looking for the next generation to come and be with us for the same length of time.”
In an ideal scenario, if Coatham was able to run its scheme two or three times a year, with four to six drivers on each cohort (a manageable level, locally) then it suggests there could quite easily be 20 jobs a year across the Tees Valley for people to enter. If it could tinker with the programme on timescales, the content, and make it fit to give a more rounded candidate, that would be a success. And if it can start to drive the average age of candidates down to the 18-20 bracket, then Mark feels it would go some way to futureproofing the industry with new drivers. But a collective voice needs to build the momentum to make that a reality.
