Support for Veterans & Armed Forces at TransPennine Express

TPE are proud to have received a Silver Award from the Ministry of Defence for recognising its support for the Armed Forces community in its workplace. 

The Defence Employer Recognition Scheme was launched to reward employers who support Defence People objectives and encourage others to do the same. This includes employing serving and former members of the Armed Forces community and demonstrating flexibility towards training and mobilisation commitments for Reservists and Cadet Force Adult Volunteers.

This achievement builds upon previous work in this area as in 2022 the train operator signed the Armed Forces Covenant, pledging support to the Armed Forces community, and obtained the Silver Level Award of the Employer Recognition Scheme.

 

 

Support for veterans at TPE

We are an employer who cares for our teams and would work with any employee who is a veteran to ensure they had the support needed whilst at TPE, including access to resources such as our Employee Assistance Programme and work with them personally to engineer appropriate and suitable adjustments to the workplace if they needed.

Together with the rail industry, we support the Armed Forces Railcard, offering a third off the cost of rail travel for both serving members of the Armed Forces, regular and reservist, but also their spouse or civil partner. The railcard is also available to non-regular full-time staff, NATO personnel under the command of the MOD and widows/widowers for the remainder of the period of validity. This is available for a purchase price of £21 and offers considerable savings on many ticket types. 

We also support and promote the Veterans Railcard, similar in nature, but which provides a discount for the holder or the holder and a named companion, as well as providing a 60% discount for children travelling with the holder.

Each year, we also offer complimentary travel on our services for serving members of the Armed Forces, Veterans, Cadets, and volunteers selling poppies, in order to make it as easy as possible for them to attend Armistice events or collect funds on behalf of the Royal British Legion.

We have also worked with colleagues to offer support to charities focused on the Armed Forces where possible, for example, we facilitated travel of one group from Manchester to Newcastle in conjunction with a colleague who had links to Walking with the Wounded. 

We also separately offer a paid volunteering day to colleagues, which can be used to volunteer time with charities, but we would also consider volunteering with Cadets or other Armed Forces organisations as being a worthy use of this time.

 

Support for Reservists 

TransPennine Express supports reservists through a number of policies which separately cover each of our different employee grades. 

At TransPennine, we provide an additional two weeks paid leave to attend training exercises etc. as part of the commitment required from Reservists. This two-week leave is considered as paid time off with leave, however, is in addition to the annual leave already afforded to the employee. In addition to this, there are allowances made while a Reservist is on deployment, for example, we allow for the maintenance of certain job benefits while on deployment, such as the ability to purchase heavily discounted, privilege rate tickets, unless travel would be recoverable from the government in the form of a warrant or otherwise.

Any deployed reservists will be reinstated in as similar a role as is possible on their return, so any employee can be reassured by the presence of this clause within their terms and conditions.

 

Support for Cadet Force Adult Volunteers

We currently allow colleagues outside of front-line roles one day a year from their duties to volunteer for charities, school support or other causes. We would also encourage volunteering for the purposes of being a Cadet Force Adult Volunteer as a worthy use of this time. 

In addition, we are always looking at additional ways we could support our colleagues as they dedicate their time to local cadet units. Be this through flexibility in shifts, the ability for our management team to manage their own time with our blessing, or through other means as seen appropriate and acceptable at the time.

 

Support military spouses/partners

We operate as an employer in a way which provides the option of flexible working to our teams. On the approach to a period of deployment military spouses or partners can make a flexible working request to their line manager and this will be assessed on a case-by-case basis. These are considered with great care, and we will seek to allow the desired change wherever possible. We can offer flexibility in several ways, such as increased working from home in some roles, compressed hours across a shorter working week or shift alterations which work around home life, although this is not an exhaustive list. 

In the tragic event that a military spouse or partner were to be confronted with an injury or bereavement, we would offer the utmost support and flexibility to that individual. We are an employer who cares for our teams and would work with the employee to ensure they had the support needed, including access to resources such as counselling through our Employee Assistance Programme and work with them to engineer an appropriate and suitable return to the workplace following their time off.

We also support colleagues within our business with additional mental health support in the form of mental health first aiders, trained peers available to all colleagues across our network.