Competence management in the UK heritage railway industry

Abstract

The research underpinning this work takes place in the context of the United Kingdom heritage railway industry with the focus of the study being how competence can be managed effectively in a predominately volunteer environment. Aspects such as the volunteer culture, motivations, the prevailing language, the diversity of skills, qualifications and learning abilities are all taken into account and considered as key factors to be addressed in managing competence effectively. In particular, the impending “cliff edge” associated with the founding generation of volunteers leaving the heritage railway industry has provided the impetus for carrying out this work. There is an urgent need to capture and transfer their knowledge in a way that can be interpreted and understood by today’s generation of volunteers. Furthermore, the cost constraints affecting the industry, especially in the light of the impact of Covid-19, mean that a process to manage the transfer of competences across heritage railways is urgently required, thereby ensuring that scarce resources can be shared and applied at different heritage railway settings. Providing effective solutions to these issues will be critical to ensuring the future viability of the industry. As reality with respect to competence exists through people’s claims, the ontological position for this research is subjective (specifically, materialism), where reality is considered to shape the values, beliefs and understandings of those involved in managing, operating, maintaining and regulating heritage railways. Given the subjective constructs at the core of competence management, the epistemological position is interpretivist, an approach which acknowledges that findings can be generated through the analysis of data in a way that is able to reveal the truths therein. This approach also best enables the inclusion of the many physical entities found within the UK heritage railway environment, as well as its people. Such material elements include the assets of the railways, from infrastructure to the various locomotives and rolling stock that are operated. They also include the rules, processes and procedures that are documented and used to manage the day to operation of the railway, including competence management. The research questions were explored through the author’s own involvement in both the UK heritage and main-line rail industries, where personal experience has been applied to inform the research methods. The key methods employed were interview, both formal (digitally recorded and transcribed as “verbatim with dialect”) and informal, of workers at a selection of UK heritage railways, observation and reflection. Thematic analysis of the results has been compared through practice analysis (questionnaires) with how competence is currently managed to develop a new understanding of the factors to be taken into consideration for an approach to competence management that “makes sense” to volunteers, thereby assuring safety whilst maintaining staff engagement and the viability of the industry. This research has shown that there is currently no common industry-wide recommended approach to competence within this context, even though existing legislation places a legal obligation on UK heritage railways to manage competence in the workplace. Although there is an understanding by both volunteers and permanent staff of the need for effective competence management, variations in how this is understood and articulated suggests this is a complex phenomenon with a number of contributory aspects and barriers, and that any underpinning processes must be appropriate to the unique nature of the UK heritage railway industry and the associated risks. Volunteer motivation and engagement is key to the future viability of the industry and competence must be managed in such a way as to ensure that this is maintained and, where possible, enhanced. It could be suggested that for each railway to be developing their own systems in isolation is a missed opportunity in terms of sharing best practice and ensuring consistency, an ever more important factor as many volunteers work on more than one railway, and in terms of resources is unlikely to be a viable approach in the longer term. The unique contribution to knowledge from this research into competence management within the UK heritage railway industry is an understanding of how heritage railway volunteers actually make sense of competence management as revealed through thematic analysis of detailed interview transcripts. Much of this knowledge is also applicable and transferable to many other areas within the growing UK volunteer sector where increasing numbers of people are engaged on this basis, often to provide vital public services. This research matters because it identifies real themes, from volunteers actively engaged in running the UK’s heritage railways. Further work is required to formulate a new approach for a competence management system that will address the issues highlighted by this research, and that is appropriate to the unique heritage railway environment, with a trial implementation and assessment on a UK heritage railway. In this way, the aspiration is that a new approach to competence management can be adopted and applied on an industry-wide basis, potentially under the auspices of the Heritage Railway Association.