HDA

HDA SOCIAL

• 
• 
• 

HDA OVERVIEW
HDA Case Studies

Career Transition / Outplacement Provision- Rail Sector

 

The Background

HDA value a long term relationship with a well known Rail Service provider and have had the opportunity to deliver support to employees via a range of products. Career Transition/Outplacement support is delivered to employees impacted by redundancy, in the main due to structural reviews within the organisation via the HDA Versatile Support Programme.

APPROACH

The programme provides a flexible approach to meet individual needs, including the opportunity to participate in ‘vocational’ training to learn new or enhance existing skills. An agreed number of units are allocated at the start to ‘spend’ against the available resource options, dependent upon the paths they wish to explore. In addition to the HDA Candidate website (an ‘information and research’ resource to compliment 1:1 meetings and workshop attendance), the employees also have access to a web-link providing a dedicated resource centre specific to their industry and location.

On notification from the sponsoring organisation the HDA ‘Online’ consultants will make initial contact with the employees to gain an understanding of their immediate requirements and initial thoughts on how best to maximise the value they gain from the support whilst also addressing any immediate concerns. A lead consultant is then matched to these needs and will make contact to arrange their first meeting. The online consultants will monitor the programme activity and seek interim feedback to ensure all needs are being met.

“We find employees with a long service history are generally quite shell shocked and uncertain of their future outside of the railway culture hence they have a tendency to focus on seeking work in other train companies using their contacts. They find it hard to understand their value outside of the industry. As a starting point, prior to meeting with their lead consultant, we recommend they access our candidate website and complete the ‘Adult Directions’ skills questionnaire to broaden their understanding of their transferability into alternative roles. In contrast, those with a shorter service have usually had experience outside of the rail sector, therefore are more open minded regarding their options. Our priority is therefore to ensure they are marketing themselves in the most effective way.

Becoming self employed is attractive to the specialist personnel, many have been performing as internal consultants to the business e.g. Health and Safety officers, business systems experts. We would therefore match these individual clients to a consultant who specialises in providing coaching and advice on both the practical requirements and life-style considerations. Some are happy to work across sector, others who are more specialised to the rail industry, set themselves up as consultants to other transport companies e.g. a specialist in timetabling worked as a consultant to companies that included rail, road transport and bus activities”
HDA Online Consultant May 2010

Candidate Feedback

Each candidate is invited to complete an end of programme survey. Consistently we see comments regarding the benefit gained from confidential 1:1 meetings with their dedicated career consultant. These meetings allow for the provision of practical advice to meet the differing needs and priorities of each candidate and in particular the following aspects have been noted:

• reviewing of a CV followed by feedback and ongoing development
• how to build and utilise a network of contacts
• sales and marketing advice both from a self employment and ‘personal branding’ perspective

In addition, the candidates reported that meeting with the career consultant resulted in heightened motivation levels. This in turn assisted them with maintaining focus on the actions they needed to take in order to move forwards.

 

Click here for more information on our Career Transition Service

Click here for more information on Our Clients

For further information: call 08452 60 95 40 or email info@hda.co.uk

To discuss potential HDA contributions, please contact us at email: info@hda.co.uk