On identifying individuals (operational staff in particular)

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Several incidents have arisen in the last few days concerning the mentioning of employees of by name (or identifiably) on the forum, and there has been some discussion between the moderators as to what the stance is / should be.    It's one of those difficult areas where it's hard to draw the line, so I have come up with the following general guidance:

My general reconning ... we shouldn't in general identify (or provide information that can allow individual staff to be quite easily indentified) individual operational staff.  Note that I say OPERATIONAL staff - clearly is we're talking about the person running the show, it's Alison Forster - err - Andree Haines - err Mark Hopwood, and there were Andrew Griffiths / Julian Crowe / Anne Marie Delrosa cases too when there name went with the job.  Exceptions are made where the name is in the public domain / common knowledge, or where we are asked to (example) help provide sponsorship for some fund raising event and it is done with the knowledge of the person involved.

Providing information about an individual and identifiable member of staff which is less that 100% positive is, in essence, making a judgement on that person's actions against which they have no recourse. And even if you think it's positive, they or their colleagues or managers who read this forum (including areas of the forum that are open only to signed in members who have posted a certain number of times) may not.

I am fully aware that these boundaries are very hard to define indeed - but I hope you can see where I / we are coming from.  Specific cases need to be judged against the reason that we need the rule in the first place, and the moderator team does co-ordinate as far as possible to be as consistent as possible.  We also try (very hard to achieve) to have such rules / rulings as easy to understand and as fair as possible.

It's probably fair to say that similar rule/rulings should be applied to identifying members of the public who are travelling.

[EBrown]

Well, this is old; but I felt the need to bring it up.

You say that identifying operational staff unless we are 100% positive is wrong, but it is happening. Frankly this whole policy is unenforceable, which makes it pointless.

There are posts on this website that offer a precise timeframe at a specific station that makes identifying staff trivial to the management, colleagues and other people.

Example time: I posted in this thread. The thread is on delays at Hayes, the original post is dated 28th February. I post:

Spoke to the Duty Station Manager (nice guy), he directed me to the ticket office.

In context that is freely available, we know this incident is on February 28th 2013, late evening. I missed the last connection. We know I was caught up in the Hayes fire that puts me at Paddington around midnight. There is only one person this Duty Station Manager could be. Originally I named this man, I was asked to remove it, but they've been identified without the name to management, colleagues and some other people, it's easy!

You say that the line is hard to draw, but the above (which easily) identifies this person, is, by your rule unacceptable. However it's about as discrete as I or anyone else can be while discussing something.

So what do you do?

[grahame]

So what do you do?

It's a difficult balance with no easy place to draw the line.  What we can't do is let the line shift right to one side of the intermediate area.

As it stands, yes, it may be possible at (many) times to work out who it (probably) was internally - but it does mean that a train manage called (say) "Oswald" can't be identified by a member of the public as "the chap that did X a favour" or whatever it was.

Rushing out the door now - hopefully that gives you an overview.

-- Graham

[LiskeardRich]

I can understand this ruling, as an external person, naming a staff member, say a staff member called John Smith, I could probably look out for him or know him, however saying the train manager on the 1800 from London to Reading I wouldnt know who that is as a member of the public, as its very unlikely I would know who the TM^‡(resolve) was on the 1800.

[EBrown]

Richard I agree, however that isn't what this rule says. The rules primary purpose is to protect staff from staff.

I'm of the opinion that the rule is far more simple and correct if it says:

You may not name any member of operational rail staff, forum member or member of the public without their consent or they are reasonably believed to already be in the public domain.

[inspector_blakey]

I can see this from both sides, as someone who has been a member of this forum for several years but has only become a member of rail staff relatively recently. Quite honestly I'd prefer not to see my name mentioned publicly regardless of the context, and I know many of my colleagues feel the same way.

In context that is freely available, we know this incident is on February 28th 2013, late evening. I missed the last connection. We know I was caught up in the Hayes fire that puts me at Paddington around midnight. There is only one person this Duty Station Manager could be. Originally I named this man, I was asked to remove it, but they've been identified without the name to management, colleagues and some other people, it's easy!

That's very true: had it been me I would have avoided providing those specifics so that nobody could be identified in this situation. We've asked posters to remove details in the past where no staff had been named but it would have been easy to work out who they were ("the train manager on the 24.07 service from Hornby Junction to Gatestown on 30 February 2013", you get the picture).

It's not just a case of protecting staff from staff, although on occasion there may be an element of that: without going into any details I've perhaps been a little over-generous on a couple of occasions to get people home during disruption. It was good customer service, but the company may not have been overly impressed had anything been fed back to them connected with my name because it was over and above what was strictly required under the CoC^▸ (Chamber of Commerce TBA). It's also that staff have just as much of a right to privacy as anyone else, and they may simply prefer not to be named whatever the context. That's their prerogative and it's a simple courtesy to try and avoid identifying staff just in case they don't want to be identified.

[Oxman]

I can understand why members of staff might not want to be identified, even if they are only guilty of providing excellent customer service!
Better safe than sorry, I suppose.

But I think it is worth suggesting that FGW^▸ (First Great Western) are not averse to staff providing excellent customer service, even if sometimes it appears to contravene the rules. It would certainly be wrong to suggest that FGW take a draconian approach against such staff.

As an example, a few years ago I managed a station which was the subject of a Which survey, where they planted a coat containing a wallet and some cash. The owner's details were clearly available in the wallet. The object was to test the response of the staff to finding this "lost property". The coat was found by a member of staff and handed in, and the person who dealt with lost property found the wallet and called the "owner", and the wallet with cash was quickly returned to its "owner". That person broke the rules - you are not supposed to call someone because, as soon as you identify that you have the property, the company becomes responsible for it. And sometimes it goes missing, and the company is liable.

But most staff will try to trace the owner. If its a phone, you look up "Home" or "Mum" in contacts and you call them and let them know you have the phone. And usually the phone is successfully returned to its owner. The safe thing to do is switch off the phone and book it in to lost property.

My station was one of a handfull nationwide that satisfied the "Which" test, which tells me that a few others were also bending the rules. The result was I was interviewed by the Beeb about the fantastic honesty and customer service provided by our staff. No one from FGW criticised what we had done - they were delighted for the good publicity it generated. I was not surprised. My experience of FGW was that, on the whole, they respond positively to good customer service, even if it involves the use of "discretion" when applying the rules.

I think that posters should not be too concerned about proclaiming instances of good customer service, even if they apparently involve a degree of discretion. The circumstances would have to be truly exceptional before FGW management took action.

And I know that FGW management regularly look at this site - I was asked to investigate a reported incident of bad customer service which was highlighted on here!!!!

[John R]

I think that posters should not be too concerned about proclaiming instances of good customer service, even if they apparently involve a degree of discretion. The circumstances would have to be truly exceptional before FGW^▸ (First Great Western) management took action.

And I know that FGW management regularly look at this site - I was asked to investigate a reported incident of bad customer service which was highlighted on here!!!!

Here's an example (in my opinion) of poor discretion though. Recently I was sitting on the xx55 to Taunton at Temple Meads, when the late running xx44 to Plymouth arrived at the adjacent platform. As the doors opened on the Plymouth train the guard closed the doors on the Taunton, although they were fully aware that some people were trying to catch it. Indeed, some were left standing outside the closed doors with some frustration, being told to stand back, with maybe an hour's wait.

So off we toddled, and the punchline to this story is that we then sat at Bedminster for 5 minutes to let the Plymouth pass (which is standard practice in such a scenario, so the staff would have known that was going to happen). Thus a 30 second delay in despatch at Temple Meads would have made no difference at all.

[grahame]

As an admin / moderator team, we've reviewed this and I can reconfirm the guidance. It's been in place for nearly 4 years without question and stood us well. It's not broken, it doesn't need fixing, especially on a single case. It's guidance rather than a rule which lets moderators decide of borderline cases as is best for the individual circumstances, and experienced and mature posters err on the side of caution, and it doesn't attach any stigma of breaking a rule to newcomers who accidentally post more than they should, provided that it's quickly corrected.

The discussion, though, has added a valuable "why" background set of information and the thoughts and reasons behind the guidance to the thread. And some interesting example - thank, Oxman and John R for the latest of those.

[swrural]

I think that posters should not be too concerned about proclaiming instances of good customer service, even if they apparently involve a degree of discretion. The circumstances would have to be truly exceptional before FGW^▸ (First Great Western) management took action.

And I know that FGW management regularly look at this site - I was asked to investigate a reported incident of bad customer service which was highlighted on here!!!!

Here's an example (in my opinion) of poor discretion though. Recently I was sitting on the xx55 to Taunton at Temple Meads, when the late running xx44 to Plymouth arrived at the adjacent platform. As the doors opened on the Plymouth train the guard closed the doors on the Taunton, although they were fully aware that some people were trying to catch it. Indeed, some were left standing outside the closed doors with some frustration, being told to stand back, with maybe an hour's wait.

So off we toddled, and the punchline to this story is that we then sat at Bedminster for 5 minutes to let the Plymouth pass (which is standard practice in such a scenario, so the staff would have known that was going to happen). Thus a 30 second delay in despatch at Temple Meads would have made no difference at all.

I wish this could be moved to a thread where we could discuss the actual issue, as that is more interesting and comes over as incredible.  I wonder, did none of you ask the guard of the Taunton what he thought he was doing?

[grahame]

I've quoted that onto a separate thread - http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=12101.0 - for further discussion.