Pros
Firstly, I've worked for National Express for about 7 months. However, I've been employed at this same job out of this same building in the same buses by the company they took over for many more years. So I am not without experience, as my "Less Than 1 Year" designation would seem to indicate. Safety oriented for everyone involved. Management wants to do the right thing. They do not gripe about paying overtime when required. Management and ownership are basically good people.
Cons
Previously mentioned focus on safety is entirely put on the backs of operators, and yet speed and efficiency is also required. Your excellent performance and lack of accidents is very much taken for granted and never praised, except on a general "You're all doing a great job!" basis. Lack of feedback on your performance; what you are doing right or wrong. Too much focus on your numbers, especially because we are always short on operators, and the operators we do have are just expected to constantly exceed standard performance to make up for lack of operators. No talk of raises. We hire 2 operators, and lose 3 more shortly thereafter. Low morale due to overwork - and I don't mean the long hours; the hours are appreciated. I am instead referring to what work they expect you to cram into each hour, and yet do it consistently 100% safely. This could all be resolved by simply having more operators. Which requires better pay, especially for this region. The pay is certainly not terrible, but for the amount of work and focus they expect, it should be 20% higher. Otherwise we will be continually locked into this current cycle of hire 2, lose 3. Hire 3, lose 2. We're barely able to maintain a level number of operators, much less increase that number. To be fair, the situation was identical to this even before National Express took over our company, but they are not recognizing that pay needs to increase before improvements can occur. I cannot currently recommend working here to a friend, but that could change if the company can resolve these issues.