Station Management Apprentice

Who are we?

South Western Railway (SWR) operates over 1,500 services each weekday across the network and employs more than 5,000 people. We provide easy and convenient mobility, connecting people and communities in South West London, southern counties of England, and the Isle of Wight.

Join our team and help us continue to bring people together to get the most out of life.

This role is an apprenticeship opportunity, where you will combine on the job learning with part-time studying for a 3-year period. During the course of the apprenticeship you will develop an in-depth knowledge of the different roles across our stations and how to effectively perform the duties of a Flagship Duty Station Manager. At the end of the apprenticeship, you should have all of the necessary skills to thrive in a Station Management role and will be encouraged to apply for suitable permanent opportunities within the business.

Please see below for the Flagship Duty Station Manager job description, attached at the bottom of the advert are the details surrounding the apprenticeship that you will undertake as part of this role.

About the job:

Responsible for the efficient station operations in their area while on shift, this role works in collaboration with a team of Flagship Duty Station Managers. The post holder is responsible for delivering excellence in customer experience, safety, and performance, and driving improvement plans to meet functional objectives. Leading a team of Safety Critical and Customer Service professionals, this position is instrumental in delivering local performance and KPIs for the assigned stations. The working hours for this role requires a degree of flexibility depending on Operational, Safety, or Contingency requirements.

Your main responsibilities will be:

Strategy and Planning

• Supports delivery of the regional strategy in their area, aligning with the overall SWR and functional plan to achieve improvements in Customer, Colleague, Commercial, Safety, and Performance areas.
• Contributes to the review of plans to ensure alignment with changing business priorities and resources, creating a culture of continuous improvement and business change.
• Creates cross-functional relationships with key internal stakeholders (allocated by their FSM), influencing the delivery of the local plans and process improvements throughout their area of stations.
• Communicates local plans effectively to key stakeholders, including front-line teams, ensuring their support in delivering strategy elements.

 Leadership

• Provides positive and inspired leadership, setting clear performance expectations and accountabilities for their team.
• Builds effective teams by responding to colleagues' immediate needs, supporting colleague well-being through a positive work environment.
• Actively listens to colleague feedback, supporting the regional/local area employee engagement strategy.
• Aligns annual objectives with SWR's vision and values, creating a sense of direction and achievement for all colleagues.

 Technical Planning

• Uses a variety of information sources to deliver tactical plans for improving station operations, planning activities to fit with the shift patterns of their teams and colleagues.
• Adapts to changing business needs, technology, and customer behaviour to ensure station operations are economical.

 Operations and Delivery

• Oversees the daily delivery of tactical plans, creating a mindset of continuous business improvement.
• Ensures safety objectives are implemented within the area and collaborates with key stakeholders for required improvements.
• Manages on the day local rostering for optimal colleague deployment, achieving business objectives and enhancing the customer experience.

 Customer and Stakeholder

• Responds to immediate customer needs and creates ideas for improvement to strengthen service at stations, ensuring consistency across all accountable locations.
• Takes corrective action to resolve any service quality issues highlighted by the SQR process
• Motivates the team to deliver excellent customer experience, driving colleague engagement and embedding a customer-centric culture.
• Develops effective relationships with trade union representatives and collaborates with relevant departments across SWR.
• Ensures collaboration with Network Rail and other TOCs to maximise the customer experience.

 Commercial Agility

• Awareness of the wider commercial impact of decisions and communicates accordingly.
• Allocates resources smartly to achieve optimum efficiency, challenging existing processes to improve efficiency and reduce operating costs. For example, the commercial impact of on-the-day resourcing of ticket offices and gatelines, TVM performance, Smartcard uptake and planning of resources to support events delivery.
• Translates and communicates commercial data to the team.
• Ensure efficient management of Retail and Gatelines (where applicable) in line with Revenue Protection strategy.

You'll need:

• Excellent communication skills
• Ability to work independently or as part of a team and adapt to changing priorities.
• Experience in a customer-focused industry.
• Desire to develop your organisational, analytical, and planning skills.
• Ability to lead and motivate teams for cultural improvement.
• This is a safety critical role and you will need to have normal colour vision, as well as meeting our minimum standard of vision & hearing for operational roles.

About the location

This role will be based across our South region, with regular travel across the network, predominantly Portsmouth to Basingstoke.

Working pattern

You will work an average of 37 hours across 5 days per week. You will be released from duty 1 day per week to attend your apprenticeship course.

Hours are varied and you will be working a variety of shifts across several locations.

This role will include weekends / bank holidays, on-call and cover for local events.

The Reward

In return we offer a competitive salary and a variety of valuable benefits, including:

• Free duty and leisure travel on SWR services for employees
• Free leisure travel for spouse/partner and dependants (criteria dependent)
• 75% discount on many other train operating companies
• Full training and support with development
• Excellent pension scheme

We all belong at SWR. Our vision is to provide an inclusive environment for all colleagues, ensuring all candidates have an equal opportunity to access meaningful employment.

We value our differences such as age, gender, LGBTQIA+, ethnicity, religion, and disability. We maintain a zero tolerance towards any form of prejudice towards our colleagues, customers, and future talent.

We celebrate and encourage diversity of thought, progressive ways of working and seeing all our colleagues grow and thrive.

If you require additional support to complete your application due to a disability or neurodivergent condition, for example, dyslexia, dyspraxia, or autism, please follow the links below.  We encourage you to share any additional needs you may require so we can provide a fair and equal process for all who apply.

https://exceptionalindividuals.com/neurodiversity/

https://www.healthassured.org/blog/neurodiversity/