Bus Éireann takes aim at ambitious hiring targets

Bus Éireann’s ambitious new business strategy will mean it hires more than 1,000 drivers over the coming years. That represents a significant challenge in an extremely tight talent market and the company joined forces with Great Place to Work to craft a customised employee value proposition (EVP) and employer brand which would help it meet the objectives of the strategy.

“Bus Éireann is a great place to work,” says chief people officer Jean O’Sullivan. “We recognise it in our people every day. I know why I love working in Bus Éireann, but I wanted to partner with Great Place to Work to ensure that we understand what it is that others in the organisation value in terms of our EVP and to make sure that our people feel valued and really enjoy working here and how we can attract others to come to work here in future. It is important for me to ensure that we are a leading brand when it comes to recruiting talent and making sure that we are recognised as a great place to work.”

The key was to understand what existing employees value most about working for Bus Éireann. “We needed to partner with Great Place to Work to get an independent point of view,” says O’Sullivan. “They carried out research for us and that confirmed what we know, what we could focus on in terms of building on our strengths, and we needed to focus more on to improve.”

Gaining insights into potential recruits was critically important. “We wanted to understand why individuals might want to choose driving as a career in first place and what we have to offer them. Why is it that drivers will want to work for us and not for another organisation? Most people think we are in competition with other bus companies, but we are actually competing with all types of driving roles. We needed to understand what would make Bus Éireann their employer of choice. To do that we needed to understand what our employees value most, particularly the driver cohort.”

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The research was carried out in three stages. “The first one element was the brand review which showed us how we are positioned in the market and where we stood in relation to our competitors,” says head of internal communications Tanya Waldron. “That was a really in-depth piece of work. We then interviewed leaders and bus drivers across the business getting their insights and allowing us to identify areas where there might be gaps between their perception, our perception, and reality. That demonstrated to our people how serious we are about improving and that we really do care about their experience as employees.”

The final step was a co-creation workshop. “We worked with the team from Great Place to Work and our own leadership team and literally built the EVP from the ground up taking on board the insights we had gained from the previous stages,” Waldron adds. “An EVP with no research can just be a corporate message and doesn’t serve the purpose of actually speaking directly to the individual. I really learned a lot from the research Great Place to Work carried out and learning to look at the results through a different set of eyes to get that different perspective.”

The process continues. “This is not a project, it’s not something that’s done in a moment in time and then put on a shelf,” Waldron explains. “It is ongoing and something we will continue to work on. A recruitment marketing strategy is not just about awareness. It’s about building the whole employer brand from beginning to end.”

The company is about to commence the process for its mechanics. “Whilst you might have an EVP for the whole company, it can actually be seen through a different lens by different cohorts of employees,” says O’Sullivan. “We now have a good understanding of our driver cohort who make up a significant percentage of the people in the organisation. The next cohort of employees that we are looking at is our mechanics and craft workers and those that support us every day in keeping our drivers and customers safe on the roads and keeping the engine of the organisation turning over.”

“We want to be an employer of choice,” she adds. “We want people to choose a career with us and spend decades with us. I don’t think we would be on the sound footing we are on terms of being confident in going out there and being able to attract the level of resources we need to deliver on our strategy without the support of Great Place to Work in developing our EVP and employer branding.”