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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 6 (October 1, 1930)

The Management and the Staff

The Management and the Staff.

As regards the staff, I myself have received much benefit from contact and discussion with them, and I think that here also the opportunities for exchange of ideas that have arisen as I have moved about the system have led to understanding and mutual confidence. I have been much gratified by the appreciative references that have been made from time to time to the work we have been able to do in this connection, and it is indeed pleasing to see the members of the staff who are located at our stations taking a more and more active interest in the business side of our operations. I have felt there is much latent strength in our organisation, which, if it could be brought out, would be particularly effective as regards our position in the community, more particularly from a competitive point of view.

I have previously mentioned on more than one occasion that the capacity of the Commercial Branch to make contact with customers and potential customers is definitely limited, and that I feel we must look more and more to our stations’ staff to constitute a fighting organisation in the competitive field.

The great development that we have had during the year, of what, for want of a better term, I may call the “business page 30 sense,” leads me to the conclusion that the point at which I have been aiming is not far distant when a substantial rearrangement in our business-getting organisation may be made with advantage, both from the point of view of efficiency and economy. I have in mind arrangements which will leave to our stations’ staff more than has been done in the past, the responsibility of attending to the commercial side of our activities in the districts served by the respective stations, and I feel confident that, as our station-masters and others, progressively develop their sense of responsibility in this regard, we will build up an organisation that will be imbued not only with principles of efficient railway operation, but also with a keen commercial sense that will make not only for the adequate protection of the Department's interests in the competitive field, but also for a still higher will to serve, upon which alone a successful business can be built.