"It takes a crisis to change an organization"
Two years AGO, after surviving a four-month-long strike and being voted the least respected company in British Columbia, Coast Mountain Bus had no choice but to turn its affairs around.
The way Pat Soanes sees it, it was about making the most of an opportunity to change.
“I’m of the belief that it takes a crisis to change an organization. People need to see a compelling reason to make a significant change,” said Soanes, corporate secretary and vice-president of corporate services at the Surrey, B.C.-based bus company owned by the regional transit authority, TransLink.
The strike by 3,300 members of Canadian Auto Workers Union local 111 lasted 128 days. The issues in dispute included the use of part-time drivers and the plan to contract out community shuttle services. All summer, commuters were left stranded. Students couldn’t get to class, seniors couldn’t get to community groups, and job-seekers couldn’t get to interviews: these kinds of stories were paraded day in day out in the local media as public anger grew.
The province eventually legislated the striking workers back to work. For Coast Mountain Bus, the hard job was ahead. Relations with workers and customers had to be repaired. Contracting out remained an issue for arbitration. And there was still $14.5 million to cut from the budget.
Drastic change was needed.
First up was a changing of the guards. “Prior to the change, the executive team did not work as a cohesive unit, and there was not a clear and common vision as to what needed to take place,” said Soanes.
Shortly after the strike, the president, vice-president of human resource and vice-president of finance, left the company. Next came the restructuring of the executive team, designed to help break down the traditional silos. Soanes took over part of the old vice-president of HR function, assuming responsibility for everything but labour relations. Handling matters with the three unions became the sole job of a new vice-president of labour relations.
Key to the restructuring effort was a new set of values, at the centre of which was the recognition that Coast Mountain Bus is an operations company and it had to be employee-focused, said Soanes.
“We had no hard assets, we don’t own the vehicles, we don’t even own the facilities. The only thing we had were our employees, but they were incredibly valuable because so many of them are at the front line, interacting with the public.”
The other big change, Soanes added, was “we were now working in a competitive environment.” With the parent company’s decision to contract out community shuttle routes, Coast Mountain Bus would now have to bid for the contracts.
It helped that resentment during the strike was directed at the parent company, TransLink, not Coast Mountain Bus, said Soanes. At the time of the strike, Coast Mountain Bus had a limited role in setting strategy. The organization was more involved in employee management and ensuring quality of service. It was Translink that determined the budget, set the routes, and issued strategic decisions like the contracting out of community routes.
“In many respects, we weren’t the bad guy,” said Soanes. “There was another bad guy. There was another villain in the piece.” During the strike, she added, management staff guarding the premises “spent many hours down at the picket lines talking to employees, making sure we were doing the best we could to ease the transition back when it eventually came around.”
After the strike, for example, there was an opportunity for the company to realize “significant savings” by adjusting vacation entitlement to actual days worked, as allowed by the collective agreement. The temptation was considerable, because Coast Mountain Bus was still “staring down the barrel” of a major budget cut, Soanes said. But the company decided against touching vacations.
“It wasn’t the kind of message we wanted to send to our employees,” said Soanes. “We wanted them to know that we were all happy that everyone was back to work, and that their contribution was invaluable in getting the service back up and running.”
After the workers were ordered back to work, the remaining issues were resolved by arbitration during a “hell week,” said Soanes.
“But what happened after (the arbitration) was interesting. The company and the union could have gone to their mutual corners and licked their wounds, and wait for another day to go back out,” said Soanes.
Instead, the two sides worked together.
For example, when new work rules were introduced after arbitration, the company and union jointly organized training “so that everybody had a common understanding of what the changes were.”
And when Coast Mountain Bus put together proposals to bid on the new routes being contracted out, the union was actively involved, said Soanes. The two sides worked hard to make sure the bids were better than anybody else’s. As a result, three of the five contracts went to them. And last month, Translink decided Coast Mountain will have the right of first refusal for all future shuttle contracts for three years.
Breaking down silos at the workplace is a running theme in Soanes’ account of changes over the last two years. Helping that along is the company’s business process evaluation approach.
“With all the changes that were taking place, we recognized that we had to establish the ability to change the organization. We couldn’t continue to do more with less. What we really needed to do was less with less, and the way to do that was to re-evaluate all our business processes,” said Soanes.
The company’s new approach to solving productivity problems is a good example of this new thinking.
Productivity problems, said Soanes, can’t be unhitched from attendance management, which is tied to a whole system of support for corporate wellness, including an array of services from a fitness centre to a detailed return-to-work program.
After an evaluation of each process, the company brought together “all the people who had responsibility for those different components for productivity — depot management, the planning and scheduling department, the attendance management program and corporate finance,” said Soanes.
“We brought all these people together to look at how hard we could push on certain things to get improvements on productivity. And we focused on accountability.”
Sharing accountability was important, because “the sort of thing that used to happen before was potshots,” said Soanes. It was too easy for staff on the operations side and the scheduling side to blame each other for bus operators missing shifts.
“Working consultatively means coming to an agreement as to what realistically can be managed on both sides of that equation. Easing up on the scheduling may in fact gain better productivity on the operation side if they can dispatch more effectively,” said Soanes.
And as a result of this push for productivity, the average service hours — for conventional operators — were brought up from 1,319 per operator to 1,400, an improvement of about two weeks’ worth of work per operator. And on top of that $14.5 million the company had to cut, Coast Mountain Bus ended up with a $3.1 million surplus.
Don MacLeod, president of the Canadian Auto Workers local that went on strike, acknowledged the improvement, but reservedly.
“There has been a serious commitment at the senior level to changing the way they do business,” he said. But more effort needs to be made to communicate this new approach to line managers, especially as they work out of six different locations, he stressed. “We still have a way to go,” said MacLeod.
Soanes agreed. There are still goals to set for the company, including obtaining more responsibilities from the parent company, she said. But change isn’t scary, she added. “What I hear over and over again is this executive team has a common and consistent vision. People may not agree with it, but they’re clear on where we’re trying to move the organization to. It’s a much more focused organization now.”
The way Pat Soanes sees it, it was about making the most of an opportunity to change.
“I’m of the belief that it takes a crisis to change an organization. People need to see a compelling reason to make a significant change,” said Soanes, corporate secretary and vice-president of corporate services at the Surrey, B.C.-based bus company owned by the regional transit authority, TransLink.
The strike by 3,300 members of Canadian Auto Workers Union local 111 lasted 128 days. The issues in dispute included the use of part-time drivers and the plan to contract out community shuttle services. All summer, commuters were left stranded. Students couldn’t get to class, seniors couldn’t get to community groups, and job-seekers couldn’t get to interviews: these kinds of stories were paraded day in day out in the local media as public anger grew.
The province eventually legislated the striking workers back to work. For Coast Mountain Bus, the hard job was ahead. Relations with workers and customers had to be repaired. Contracting out remained an issue for arbitration. And there was still $14.5 million to cut from the budget.
Drastic change was needed.
First up was a changing of the guards. “Prior to the change, the executive team did not work as a cohesive unit, and there was not a clear and common vision as to what needed to take place,” said Soanes.
Shortly after the strike, the president, vice-president of human resource and vice-president of finance, left the company. Next came the restructuring of the executive team, designed to help break down the traditional silos. Soanes took over part of the old vice-president of HR function, assuming responsibility for everything but labour relations. Handling matters with the three unions became the sole job of a new vice-president of labour relations.
Key to the restructuring effort was a new set of values, at the centre of which was the recognition that Coast Mountain Bus is an operations company and it had to be employee-focused, said Soanes.
“We had no hard assets, we don’t own the vehicles, we don’t even own the facilities. The only thing we had were our employees, but they were incredibly valuable because so many of them are at the front line, interacting with the public.”
The other big change, Soanes added, was “we were now working in a competitive environment.” With the parent company’s decision to contract out community shuttle routes, Coast Mountain Bus would now have to bid for the contracts.
It helped that resentment during the strike was directed at the parent company, TransLink, not Coast Mountain Bus, said Soanes. At the time of the strike, Coast Mountain Bus had a limited role in setting strategy. The organization was more involved in employee management and ensuring quality of service. It was Translink that determined the budget, set the routes, and issued strategic decisions like the contracting out of community routes.
“In many respects, we weren’t the bad guy,” said Soanes. “There was another bad guy. There was another villain in the piece.” During the strike, she added, management staff guarding the premises “spent many hours down at the picket lines talking to employees, making sure we were doing the best we could to ease the transition back when it eventually came around.”
After the strike, for example, there was an opportunity for the company to realize “significant savings” by adjusting vacation entitlement to actual days worked, as allowed by the collective agreement. The temptation was considerable, because Coast Mountain Bus was still “staring down the barrel” of a major budget cut, Soanes said. But the company decided against touching vacations.
“It wasn’t the kind of message we wanted to send to our employees,” said Soanes. “We wanted them to know that we were all happy that everyone was back to work, and that their contribution was invaluable in getting the service back up and running.”
After the workers were ordered back to work, the remaining issues were resolved by arbitration during a “hell week,” said Soanes.
“But what happened after (the arbitration) was interesting. The company and the union could have gone to their mutual corners and licked their wounds, and wait for another day to go back out,” said Soanes.
Instead, the two sides worked together.
For example, when new work rules were introduced after arbitration, the company and union jointly organized training “so that everybody had a common understanding of what the changes were.”
And when Coast Mountain Bus put together proposals to bid on the new routes being contracted out, the union was actively involved, said Soanes. The two sides worked hard to make sure the bids were better than anybody else’s. As a result, three of the five contracts went to them. And last month, Translink decided Coast Mountain will have the right of first refusal for all future shuttle contracts for three years.
Breaking down silos at the workplace is a running theme in Soanes’ account of changes over the last two years. Helping that along is the company’s business process evaluation approach.
“With all the changes that were taking place, we recognized that we had to establish the ability to change the organization. We couldn’t continue to do more with less. What we really needed to do was less with less, and the way to do that was to re-evaluate all our business processes,” said Soanes.
The company’s new approach to solving productivity problems is a good example of this new thinking.
Productivity problems, said Soanes, can’t be unhitched from attendance management, which is tied to a whole system of support for corporate wellness, including an array of services from a fitness centre to a detailed return-to-work program.
After an evaluation of each process, the company brought together “all the people who had responsibility for those different components for productivity — depot management, the planning and scheduling department, the attendance management program and corporate finance,” said Soanes.
“We brought all these people together to look at how hard we could push on certain things to get improvements on productivity. And we focused on accountability.”
Sharing accountability was important, because “the sort of thing that used to happen before was potshots,” said Soanes. It was too easy for staff on the operations side and the scheduling side to blame each other for bus operators missing shifts.
“Working consultatively means coming to an agreement as to what realistically can be managed on both sides of that equation. Easing up on the scheduling may in fact gain better productivity on the operation side if they can dispatch more effectively,” said Soanes.
And as a result of this push for productivity, the average service hours — for conventional operators — were brought up from 1,319 per operator to 1,400, an improvement of about two weeks’ worth of work per operator. And on top of that $14.5 million the company had to cut, Coast Mountain Bus ended up with a $3.1 million surplus.
Don MacLeod, president of the Canadian Auto Workers local that went on strike, acknowledged the improvement, but reservedly.
“There has been a serious commitment at the senior level to changing the way they do business,” he said. But more effort needs to be made to communicate this new approach to line managers, especially as they work out of six different locations, he stressed. “We still have a way to go,” said MacLeod.
Soanes agreed. There are still goals to set for the company, including obtaining more responsibilities from the parent company, she said. But change isn’t scary, she added. “What I hear over and over again is this executive team has a common and consistent vision. People may not agree with it, but they’re clear on where we’re trying to move the organization to. It’s a much more focused organization now.”
