I'm all in favour of motivating staff to provide a better service for customer and for employer.  But I have also been involved in a number of such schemes (as employee and scheme constructor) where they reward so widely that they're a blunt tool, where they lead to envy of those in the scheme by those outside, and where they lead to distorted actions by the scheme members to maximise their income irrespective of whether that's really in the interest of the scheme organiser.

I don't know the scheme that you're talking about, but it seems from how you describe it that it might fail at my first hurdle - too blunt to be useful. It may also fall at the third hurdle if it looks at a statistic which is arteficial. However, it could be that although it's not going to make any practical direct difference to the staff involved it WILL cause them to take a renewed interest in a statistic that many be flawed, but never the less is something they should be aware of and be looking to improve.

I am one of the on train members of staff that will recieve this bonus, and i totally agree that i'm getting this payment for just doing my job! There is no way that i can dispatch a train any quicker, or travel between stations any faster, just to save a few delay minutes. It's what i was trained to do anyway! I'm sure this is just a ploy to try to raise staff morale by FGW, as this is at rock bottom. What FGW management should be doing is looking at the underlying problems that cause the delays, such as unreliable rolling stock, and more easily rectified: their poor rostering and resourcing. i.e. having the correct crew and units in the right place and the right time!

As for having pride in the railways, I really wish I could.....but have you seen the state of some of the 153's we have to work on?


[Edited to amend formatting only - content unchanged - Graham]

Some interesting points made there. I agree with almost all of them.

My own perception of staff reaction to the 'bonus' is that it is felt that it is just another way of trying to increase morale by glossing over the REAL issues as to why performance has been hit badly since the tail end of last year. I can not blame on-train staff for showing malaise when they have to witness a frankly embarrassing lack of organisation and systems for providing them with the tools to do there job correctly.

Removal of local train crew supervisors at the bigger stations (Oxford, Reading, Paddington etc.) and plonking them all in the control offices at Swindon is a prime example. FGW tried to tell us that by doing this their supervisors would be the 'first to know' about any disruption and be able to sort out cover for trains much quicker than now (and of course save money on staffing costs). Sounds a reasonable assumption? However, anyone who knows how useful these supervisors were - especially at times of service disruption - knew that all that would happen is that the guys and gals in Swindon would get totally swamped as soon as anything went wrong.

For example, WHAT USED TO HAPPEN - A driver arriving late at Oxford and needing a PNB (statutory Physical Needs Break) meaning he would be delayed for his next working used to pop his head round the door and tell the supervisor on his way to his break, who would instantly know who was in the mess room and could cover his next move and just wander 10 yards to go and ask him to cover it.

WHAT NOW HAPPENS - The driver arrives and has to call Swindon (usually involving several attemps as the line is busy with similar enquiries). Swindon then has no real idea who exactly is available and has to call the mess room in the hope that someone answers it. If not, then they have to try mobile phones (which drivers are not allowed to have switched on when driving and may have forgotten to switch on at all). And all this while that next working is sat in platform 2 at Oxford waiting for a driver with three trains now stuck behind it due to the inflexible operation at Oxford station.

A prime example of this is that our rosters for sunday have been posted at our depot. 2 guards are shown as "sorry unavailability declined".
This means that the have opted not to work sundays, and have never worked on a sunday,but centralised rostering is expecting them to work this sunday.THEY WILL NOT BE THERE!
If they turn up to work on sunday they leave themselves open to have to work every sunday they are rostered for( as per local agreements)
What do you think will happen?
They will inform our resource centre at Swindon, who will try(unsucssefully) to cover their jobs, so the turns will go uncovered, and various trains will be cancelled. This is despite of the fact that there are other guards available to work, but because of their start times on monday morning cannot pick up the turns (due to Hidden) Now if resourcing and rostering was still done locally there would be some favours called in, and some swapping and changing of turns to ensure that all jobs were covered, but as this is all done centrally in Swindon by a computer programme which apparently cannot look further than the day it is working on, trains will be cancelled( or someone who was unavailable to work will be paid 24 hrs pay to work an 8 hr shift) It's a good system apparently if you read what is said in the link in one of the above posts.........

And I think that's why even the 'good' staff find it hard to be motivated sometimes.

The delay attribution system is so inaccurate on occasions, that it beggars-belief. To paint the somewhat whiter-than-white picture that poor old Network Rail is lumped with all these delays it didn't cause is a little far-fetched though - as they'll pull all the same stunts that all the other TOC's (including FGW) to try and save them getting attributed to themselves and therefore having to pay out! The problem is that so much money changes hands that if FGW or anyone else were to just hold their hands up and not challenge the delays NR have put down to them, they would literally lose thousands of pounds a day.

The big problem with delay attribution is not so much the 'direct cause' delays, but the 'reactionary delays'. I've seen a simple delay of 10 minutes waiting a driver, get over 300 minutes of reactionary delay attributed to it from all sorts of very difficult to prove delays that it allegedly caused - this can be as a result of poor management of the delay by FGW, or poor regulation of trains by NR signallers, or many other reasons. Either way, that's when all the TOC's and NR fight like mad to get another party to accept these delays.

I have got to know plenty of signallers, and visited many signalboxes during my career. The majority are hard working, concientious, and friendly. There is also the odd lazy, grumpy bugger! That's the same with any industry, including the front-line staff of FGW. I felt your post was over-criticising those staff and I was pointing out that Network Rail and all the other TOC's 'blatantly lie' too.