Weekly Feed - Ashley
Ashley Avery – Business Management and HR Graduate 2009
Monday
Back to Head Office for part 3 of a 4 part business skills writing course. The course drums into us the need to use succinct and clear language in business writing, For many of us grads, it is a painful experience as we kiss goodbye to our uni habits of using convoluted jargon and unnecessary words to get a point across. Academic writing is NOT the same as business writing.
Back to the Depot at lunchtime and spend the afternoon playing with the various computer applications I now have access to (Radio Room, Customer feedback system, BIS) to work out what it is they are used for, how to use them and why I will need them.
Tuesday
Back to Head Office again for the monthly Direct Reports meeting with the Depot Manager. This meeting enables the CEO, General Managers and Depot Managers to meet face to face to discuss last month’s performance regarding revenue, bus running, incidents, staff absenteeism etc.
Back to the Depot in the afternoon, and to begin shadowing a duty manager to find out what goes into managing the daily Afternoon peak, such as checking in with shed drivers for bus availability and reviewing the weekly supplement for upcoming special weekend events (in this case, the V Festival and a few concerts).
Key thing I learnt today was the importance of Key Performance Indicator’s and management of peak times.
Wednesday
Supposed to be spending a full day shadowing the duty manager but arrive to find he has already been called out to an incident and will be gone for the next few hours resolving some urgent issues.
Instead I spend the day with the admin. assistant devising various workplace flow charts. We simplify and outline procedures such as accident reporting to make the process quicker and easier for staff to follow, so not only does it benefit staff here at the Depot, but also makes things a lot clearer in my mind about how things work around here.
Thursday
Off to attend Merit Selection Recruitment workshop so I can understand the principles of recruitment in the public services and be able to sit on interview panels for STA in the future.
It’s very hands on and we (the attendees; myself, two operations trainees and various other mechanics/ administration staff/ staff supervisors from different depots) need to actually apply the information given to us in examples and role-plays.
Not sure how ready I am to go through the whole recruitment/selection process yet (it’s massive with all the reports and criteria you need to devise), but at least I have some background knowledge and a solid outline of what to do and avoid when interviewing.
Friday
6.30am start for a full day with a duty manager. We start by checking off any altered shifts due to late running, sickness etc and then head out to do time and load checks at a stop near Bondi Beach.
We stand for nearly two hours checking off bus numbers, passenger loads and timing as they come through, with the information to be used in the future for scheduling and other purposes.
Head back to the depot and have requests for CCTV footage to be scheduled following a few over night incidents, so we run through all of the associated paperwork and locate the required buses to extract the required hard drives.
Run through the paperwork and route maps required by staff for the weekends supplementary activities (i.e. festival ) and before I know its 2:30 and time to head home again.
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