How To Get Happier Bus Drivers

Patrick Parents
5 min readMay 23, 2021

Paperwork, Policies, and Punishment–agencies fail to promote productivity within the workplace. Penalizing your drivers won’t motivate them to work harder.

It disconnects the workforce from the decision-makers and instills stronger divisiveness. It results in reactive responses and an “us vs. them” mentality that plagues transit operations. The agency is in direct control of the work culture, and if they do not maintain a healthy environment, it can, unfortunately, trickle-down and affect customers.

Hard-working operators literally and figuratively drive the transit industry forward. No matter the effort you put into gathering and analyzing data to create schedules–it will not affect employees who do not feel appreciated. Loyalty needs to be earned by the leaders of the companies. If you treat workers poorly, they will become indifferent to the agency.

The “fear culture” does not work and will only backfire on you.

Pressuring employees might have worked in the past, but the workplace has undergone some profound changes in this modern-day. Employees are less likely to respond to orders and threats–you might find your company image tarnished on social media if you try to use punishment to motivate. Ultimately, it will stunt development and build resentment among a workforce that requires strong teamwork to be…

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