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Announced today, Networkrail Recruitment Ban

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Tio Terry

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Networkrail have, today, announced a recruitment ban. This seems strange given that there is a serious shortage of capable, competent Engineers to deliver the desired improvements to the network, in particular the electrification and resignaling/recontrol to ROC's projects.
 
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Nym

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Just the kind of public sector logic one would expect.

What will actually happen is that all of the design that they're short of labor on will be outsourced to contractors, and if there still isn't enough labor, the assurance will also be passed out to another company, so you end up with an asset manager who has no idea what's going on with it's assets...

Sounds about right really...
 

TheEdge

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178 jobs currently advertised on NR's website and NR's recruitment Twitter account has made 6 posts today...

Make of that what you will...
 

Shunter_69

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I hope that's the case as my wife is waiting for a verbal job offer to be confirmed in writing.
 

Bletchleyite

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Plenty of corporates do that, and it makes little actual sense, just like travel bans. Business travel should *always* only occur when necessary at any time, as with recruitment, and should be good value. If not it shouldn't happen regardless of when.
 

SPADTrap

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I'm a bit perplexed about a recruitment 'ban'? A freeze for financial reasons maybe?

Why would an organisation ban itself from recruiting? Were they just recruiting for fun rather than an actual need previously...? :s
 

Clip

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I'm a bit perplexed about a recruitment 'ban'? A freeze for financial reasons maybe?

Why would an organisation ban itself from recruiting? Were they just recruiting for fun rather than an actual need previously...? :s

To easily outsource to contractors for cheaper in a way so that they go back to how it was before they too maintenance in house?
 

najaB

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I'm a bit perplexed about a recruitment 'ban'? A freeze for financial reasons maybe? Why would an organisation ban itself from recruiting?
More likely they are looking at their structure and trying to decide if all the people already in the organisation will continue in their current roles. No point filling a vacancy with external people if there may soon be internal people looking for new roles.
 

al.currie93

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I'm not surprised at all - while the ban may not be present elsewhere, this attitude is also happening in so many infrastructure engineering industries, both public and private. Much of the electricity supply industry seems to be the same.
 

The Planner

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It was an internal email from Mark Carne, also bans using consultants too in certain circumstances. It is £££ led.
 

rdeez

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Wow. I'm lucky I got my application in when I did - good to know that all current recruitment processes will continue.
 

carriageline

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Strange that, seeing as company wide there is a massive shortage in the Ops side of business. My 'box is carrying 13 or so vacancies they can't fill
 

Wilt

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Wow. I'm lucky I got my application in when I did - good to know that all current recruitment processes will continue.

Unfortunately if the vacancy you have applied for hasn't held interviews before today then the hiring manager will need to seek approval by the new Resource Approval Panel before it can go any further. They will only approve 'critical' roles (not defined) and headcount increasing positions will not be approved - ie. one in one out and only if the vacancy is causing things to go wrong.
 
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FordFocus

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I wouldn't have thought it would affect signalling or electrification schemes as they are mainly outside contractors like Balfour, Siemens, Amey.

reguarly hear how some p-way and S&T gangs are undermanned though.

So look forward to performance decreasing gradually when people retire or aren't replaced then bring in the agency staff. Government to blame NR managers and then we have Railtrack Mk2 proposed!
 

Tetchytyke

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It was an internal email from Mark Carne, also bans using consultants too in certain circumstances. It is £££ led.

With genius logic like this, I can see why Mark Carne gets paid £675,000 a year.

Obviously Network Rail are overstaffed, they've got such a good recent track record of managing big infrastructure projects with maximum efficiency.
 
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Llanigraham

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I wouldn't have thought it would affect signalling or electrification schemes as they are mainly outside contractors like Balfour, Siemens, Amey.

reguarly hear how some p-way and S&T gangs are undermanned though.

So look forward to performance decreasing gradually when people retire or aren't replaced then bring in the agency staff. Government to blame NR managers and then we have Railtrack Mk2 proposed!

I don't think the 2 of us were talking about signalling schemes, but actual signallers!
And you can't bring in agency workers to do our jobs.
 

edwin_m

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How many recent RAIB reports have cited staff shortages at Network Rail as contributory factors?
 

rdeez

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Unfortunately if the vacancy you have applied for hasn't held interviews before today then the hiring manager will need to seek approval by the new Resource Approval Panel before it can go any further. They will only approve 'critical' roles (not defined) and headcount increasing positions will not be approved - ie. one in one out and only if the vacancy is causing things to go wrong.

Thank you for that information, though it's not good news! I've been 'Under consideration for Assessment 2' for a week so presumably no interviews have taken place yet. I'll just have to wait and see what happens.
 

FordFocus

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I don't think the 2 of us were talking about signalling schemes, but actual signallers!
And you can't bring in agency workers to do our jobs.

Indeed :)

Eventually it will click somewhere at MK that signallers are quite key in the operation of the railway :lol:
 

jopsuk

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private companies go through recruitment bans periodically very often. Usually a misguided attempt to save money; usually ended only when the problems reach high level. Standard idiotic business practice.
 
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