Hundreds of bus driver roles remain unfilled around Australia, and it’s a major issue for bus operators. A lack of available drivers can result in unpredictable or interrupted bus services and unhappy customers left stranded roadside.

Targeted recruitment programs and improvements to driver safety are making an impact. But savvy operators know that talent attraction and effective training are just part of the solution. The ultimate prize? Keeping high performers in the job for longer.

Driver retention is critical to running an efficient operation, reducing downtime, and maintaining a consistently great customer experience. All of which underpins profitability and an organisation’s reputation — both in the community and with regulators and funders. 

Queensland-based operator, Kangaroo Bus Lines (KBL) turned to netBI’s data analytics and reporting platform to help it understand driver performance and create a more objective and energising workplace for its team of bus drivers.

Insights from netBI’s platform have helped KBL’s management to: 

• Have better one-on-one conversations with drivers about their work to enhance employee wellbeing, satisfaction, motivation and loyalty. 

• Quickly identify and resolve anomalies in driver performance before they pose an organisational risk through performance penalties or reputation loss.

“Facts, not opinions” improve KPI performance

KBL Network Planning and Performance Manager, Andrew Fawcett, said that being able to openly discuss performance, with data behind it, has given drivers a clearer sense of fairness and purpose. As a result, the operator has improved its ability to meet key performance indicators (KPIs) set out in its service contracts. 

For instance, the ability to have data-driven performance conversations has increased service reliability, as measured by on-time running (OTR). 

Andrew describes a recent case where a manager had heard about a driver that was regularly starting trips late. 

“We knew we needed to evaluate their performance with data in order to pinpoint the issue and develop a corrective plan using facts, not opinions,” he said.

By reviewing the driver’s performance in netBI, it became clear there was a pattern of late starts that meant their OTR score had dropped below the contracted threshold, which was costing KBL money.

They could also tell it was an individual problem, because netBI enables KBL to compare any single driver’s performance, over time, against other drivers doing the same route for a ‘big picture’ view of the extent of an issue.

“When we can look at multiple sources of information and then do a comparative analysis with the broader workforce, we can be confident that we not only know exactly what is going on, but that any solution we design will resolve the issue for good because we are working from a place of data-based reality. These insights also serve to motivate drivers to always be conscious of their behaviours and impacts on OTR. You can’t hide from the data,” Andrew explains.

Data helps managers uncover hidden driver stressors 

In another case, insights drawn from netBI ensured KBL was able to offer support to a driver with a good track record whose personal issues were affecting their performance. Andrew said netBI’s daily metrics dashboards showed a sudden drop in the driver’s score, taking them below the required standard.

On closer inspection within netBI’s platform, KBL discovered the driver had seen a sharp decline in their ‘invalid trip selection’ score for a particular route, which was dragging down their overall performance. 

“The driver admitted to family issues that were preoccupying them — on that route they had no break after ending the previous route, and in the rush simply forgot to switch routes in the system until well after the second trip had commenced,” Andrew said.

Driver safety and well-being is a focus of KBL, which ultimately flows through to higher retention and better service provision. As such, he said the driver was offered time off, which was gratefully accepted. And once they returned to work, their performance immediately returned to their usual high standards. 

Andrew said having insights at their fingertips via netBI meant issues that arise can often be spotted and resolved within a reporting period, so that contractual penalties can be avoided entirely. KBL is also able to proactively approach employees well before issues escalate further.

Making it easier to maximise talent across two streams

Using netBI has also improved how KBL tweaks its business model — which is delivered across two types of bus services: charter trips and contracted public transport routes. KBL drivers are trained to work across both service types, but the performance measures for each are different. 

Previously, that had created a lot of complexity for KBL, requiring significant effort to deploy the right people to the right services and handle the switching between, while also keeping drivers engaged and service quality high. 

Historically, public transport services provided some data transparency through ticketing and real-time data, but the visibility was incomplete and for charter services it was very opaque. 

With netBI, KBL is now able to fuse data from multiple source systems, including telematics, to give a holistic view of individual driver performance, and the entire workforce, across both charter and public transport services. 

It can now maximise its human resources through analytics that lets managers: 

• See all the data in one place at the same time, and drill down into records for specific drivers, dates, service types and other factors. 

• Reliably measure and evaluate how drivers perform on both charter and public transport trips. 

• Look at individual driver performance history, and also a collective benchmark across the entire workforce for a single or combined service type.

KBL now has a trusted starting point to improve how it runs it’s operation. For example, they’ve used insights into how drivers transition from one type of work to another to identify where some drivers may be struggling and need more training. 

By identifying higher performing drivers, they plan to incorporate learnings from them back into training programs for the broader workforce.

We know the data holds the answers 

Andrew Fawcett said the operator could not have achieved these outcomes without netBI’s platform. “You just can’t get this level of data granularity from any other system. You also can’t easily layer multiple data sources to accurately pinpoint the root cause and see insights in minutes, not days and weeks.”

He said KBL now feels confident that it can extract answers from its data that underpin its HR and business management processes, with an intuitive tool that empowers anyone to quickly run queries and explore insights.

“You might be taken on a journey with that data, starting with one premise, but as you validate each insight you can keep drilling down, or in any direction really, until the answer appears. The flexibility and speed of netBI to do this level of analysis is unprecedented.”