Improving Passenger Information during Disruptions for a Train Operating Company

Client:

Chiltern Railways

Category:

Train Operating Company

Website Link:

www.chilternrailways.co.uk

The Business Challenge

Managing passenger information during disruption (PIDD) is a significant factor in running effective and quick-to-recover rail operations. Disruptions are unpredictable, and their timely resolution is ultimately dependent on the expert knowledge of experienced frontline staff. The development of frontline employees by their employers usually takes the form of practice reviews and ‘on-the-job’ learning which contrasts with more academic education that often majors on theoretical approaches and classroom based teaching. This industry-funded project developed a serious game (the ‘Rail Disruption Game’) that combines theory and practice to better manage PIDD for frontline staff in a UK train operating company (TOC). This project provided insight into how to design, make and deploy a serious game as part of a gamified management process.

Systems Thinking and Action Research

Systems thinking was used to investigate the complex system that delivers rail services and has to resolve service disruption, not so that they can be prevented, but so it is known what to do when they occur so that frontline staff know how to recover to normal service as quickly as possible. Numerous interviews were conducted with frontline staff on platforms and on trains as well as those in signalling, media and ticketing as well as staff from other key stakeholders such as Network Rail, the Office for Road and Rail, British Transport Police, etc. A PrOH Model was created as given from this knowledge and socialised around many parts of the company.

As a result of this systems thinking and action research many frontline staff became aware of how to resolve disruptions more quickly and with greater customer satisfaction.

Benefits

To further embed the systemic knowledge gained from the systems modelling a board game with an interactive video was designed for the training department to use in regular staff training events which has been used with hundreds of frontline staff in recent years. This game involved groups of staff working through disruptive scenarios stage by stage and dealing with typical questions from different types of customers throughout an unfolding disruption. The game is challenging because players must work together to beat the clock and give passengers good quality answers to their questions. The board game embodies many of the systemic challenges learned during the systemic analysis.