Posted November 9, 2023

Virtually every school system in America is experiencing the same thing: 1) their school bus entities are experiencing a retention problem, 2) student management concerns on those buses, and 3) dynamic shifts in their perspective workforces.

We’ll get to student management later. My question today: is there any real solution to lagging retention rates or the drastic shift in the workforce?

The kneejerk answer is more money. But a revolutionary, and more consistent answer to both questions, is shockingly the same. School districts must create new business models to address both retention concerns and 21st-century labor demands.

Most school bus operations are still based on principles from the last millennium. School bus companies manufacture safer and smarter buses, but AI technology is light years away from replacing humans in the seat and humans are still increasingly prone to a vast array of distractions.

Newer, better buses are great. But, 21st-century stressors on drivers and the ever-evolving/expanding role of drivers make driving any bus more challenging. Older drivers will attest to these changes in the job. Their stress levels are often met with new “rules of engagement” that force them to dredge through because they’re seen as veterans. There are very few outlets for mental release or decompressing. They’re simply expected to deal with it and show up the next day to start all over. And they do.

But statistics are skewing towards a younger workforce. This Gen Z-based workforce often has a complex work ethic compared to their Gen X and Millennial co-workers and supervisors.

In 2022, Forbes reported that Generation Z is, and continues to be, the largest part of America’s workforce. It is simply the natural order of the universe. Baby Boomers and Millennials were once the “New Generation” with ideas and positions that their elders didn’t fully understand. Granted, Boomers didn’t have cell phones and social media as distractions.

If your school bus workforce has 3 to 4 different generations working side by side (and most likely yours does), deference must be given to the mindset and work ethic of this growing demographic. Gen Z is not an antagonist, but their world view is distinctly different. It is not enough to simply ask, “what’s wrong with them?”, or snidely remark, “they are so lazy” or “that’s not how we used to do it”. The “game” must be tweaked to accommodate their unique perspectives while still achieving the ultimate goal, the safe and timely transportation of the students. But how?

Tech companies understood this when they were creating themselves (likely because most of them were founded by older Millennials). Fun, more causal workspaces. Lounges and custom kitchens. Modified times and ways to work. Fun at work. Corporate work models began to follow their lead and made transformative changes to the 21st-century workspace, and Covid-19 forced things to evolve even more.

Fun. But you will rarely hear the word “fun” used to describe school bus driving. Why?

While not everyone considers it so, the school bus is the office for drivers. Clearly, working from home doesn’t fit school bus driving, so how do we evolve the 35’-foot, 16K ton, large yellow rolling cubicle into a “fun” workspace that mitigates the emotional and mental challenges of a potentially hostile workspace?

Let’s keep the wheels on the bus going round and round and support those who help them go around. It’s time for a new, wholistic, comprehensive, data-driven business model for school bus transportation where each stakeholder, school boards, administrations, management, and drivers collaborate to create an effective, compelling, and sustaining means of supporting and retaining the vast diversity of their passenger transportation workforce, namely its drivers.

But what does that model look like?

Seve Adigun

Executive Director, TeamDriveSAFE, [email protected]

Seve Oba Adigun is a 30-year veteran of passenger transportation and organizational behavioral analysis/management. He is the founder of Drivertude: From the Pavement to the People, Advocacy for Passenger Transportation Professionals.