Wiltshire & Dorset Bus Company supporting Skills for Life
Keith Nottle looks forward to the end of his shift when he can go home and relax, helping his two boys with their homework.
It’s a simple pleasure that many of us take for granted, but it’s a new experience for the Cornish bus driver.
“It makes me feel great,” he beams. “My reading wasn’t up to scratch because I didn’t need it for my job but I challenged myself to improve, and that’s what I’ve done. I can now sit down with the boys and help them a bit. That’s what I did it for.”
Keith moved from Cornwall a few years ago, where he chopped up meat for pasties. However his new job, driving a bus around his adopted county of Dorset required a higher standard of literacy so, with the help of his union, the RMT, he set about improving.
“My new job means I need to read and write more, because everything needs to be written down, filling out forms, safety checks,” he explains. “In my previous job, I didn’t need to do this, but now I love learning”
And his employer, Wilts and Dorset Bus Company, also reap the benefit of his new skills.
“Any new skills are good for any company,” says staff manager Phil Keys. “We found our staff retention increased dramatically when we gave our drivers better training. “It gave them more confidence and union learning has given the same drivers even more confidence. It’s been great for us.
To give an example: there was an incident on one of the buses a while ago and it was quicker for me to take the information from Keith and fill in the form myself than it was for Keith to fill it in. That’s all changing now.”
“I can’t fill in all the form, but will be able to soon,” adds Keith. “If I get a form, I can read it now. I might get stuck on a word, but I can read it.”
It’s not just his boss who’s noticed a change in Keith – it’s his colleagues too.
“When he first came here he was very quiet, kept himself to himself, and I think some of the lads took the mick out of him,” says ULR Kevin Sanderson. “Now he’s more confident, more outgoing. He’s a different guy altogether. Everyone sees the difference in him.
“He’s done marvellous,” he says. “He comes in his own time, he sees the tutor in his own time and when he needs time off, I go and see the manager and they realise how hard he works so they give him time off.”
Keith isn’t the only success story at the depot – there are around a dozen learners, most of whom are able to fir their learning around their work, thanks to U-Net, (Learndirect) the unionlearn flexible online learning system that allows learners to carry out their studies wherever there is a computer.
“I do a lot of my work at home on my own computer,” Keith says. “It’s fairly easy to fit it in in the morning, or evenings, depending on my shifts.”
“I try and get an hour in a day, but if I didn’t then it wouldn’t matter because Catherine the tutor would give me extra time to finish it. There’s no pressure.”
Catherine Payne, who works for New College in Swindon and is based at home in Somerset, visits the depot in Poole once a week to offer assistance to learners.
“Learndirect is great because it enables greater flexibility for those with irregular shifts – they can access it 24 hours a day,” she says.
“We’re looking at drivers who are working five days out of seven, including weekends, so to arrange union learning on a particular day, or to give a driver a number of hours at a certain time is not easy,” concedes Phil, staff manager. “But I give them as much support as I can”.
Does Keith feel the extra work is worth the effort? “Oh yes,” he nods. “I’ve worked hard but it’s worth it. I’m a different guy.”
