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News 77
Empowering Staff: Enabling Passengers
A recently published new Guidance Note, on the role of training in delivering accessible and inclusive transport services provides some valuable insights and approaches that managers and transport planners can apply to achieve better standards of customer service for older and disabled people.
On a grey day in late January 2013, around 60 delegates from a wide range of backgrounds, including representatives of operators and passengers, attended a conference at Transport for London’s headquarters. It was designed to bring experts together to discuss and highlight the role training can or should play in helping to meet the needs of disabled travellers, and making the difference between a bad journey experience and a good one. Transport planners, operators from different public transport modes, as well as disabled passenger transport users, shared their insights and experiences. Delegates debated ways in which transport providers can improve the travel experience for disabled and older people and discussed imaginative solutions for today’s climate of constrained Government funding.
Even with good intentions, transport planners can often forget the breadth of disability in society. Peter Rayner, Conference Chair, reminded the conference that according to UK figures there are some 11 million people with disabilities. As he said: ‘Many disabilities are invisible to others. Disability is not just about people who are blind or in a wheelchair. It covers a raft of other conditions and, in an essentially ageing society, the numbers are set to grow.’
Fast forward some months, and the deliberations from this conference have provided very useful feedback for members of the CILT’s Accessibility & Inclusion Forum, who have been putting together the Guidance Note to encourage transport providers to become more aware of their legal obligations, and to see investing in better staff training and facilities for disabled travellers, not as a legal jungle or as a burdensome cost but as a positive business opportunity.
The report’s emphasis has been on encouraging transport companies to invest in staff training so that disabled and older travellers can trust in a system that understands their needs and is trying to meet them.
Having understood the legal position, how should companies manage their staff training? The Guidance Note offers a way forward in three main areas:
• Recruit the right staff
• Provide the right kind of training
• Reach out to disabled people
The final word goes to Peter Rayner: ‘Rapidly changing demographics mean that passenger transport providers must plan ahead to take advantage of a positive business opportunity to encourage older and disabled people to use their services, as well as being sure of fulfilling their legal obligations.’
The Guidance Note should provide a useful resource for transport planners and operators alike. It is available online
here