Highberg partners with NS to align culture and collaboration for effective Strategy Execution
The NS chain "Specific Days" was dealing with increased workload, reduced quality, and a lack of future-proofing due to changes in passenger behavior, staff shortages, and last-minute adjustments. Highberg was brought in to analyze the bottlenecks, design a future vision, and implement it iteratively. This led to annual savings of €300,000, clear cultural changes, and improved collaboration within the chain. Employee satisfaction increased significantly, particularly in terms of workload, clarity of expectations, and collaboration. The approach consisted of analysis, design, and implementation using an agile methodology.
The customer request
The "Specific Days" chain creates customized timetables for events, holidays, and service disruptions. The context has changed significantly due to altered passenger patterns after the COVID pandemic, staff shortages, and more last-minute service disruptions from ProRail. Despite multiple attempts, no sustainable solutions had been found for the following three objectives:
- Workload: streamlined processes without rework
- Quality: higher seat availability and passenger punctuality
- Future-proofing: a self-learning capability within the chain
Emile Drost, Head of Planning & Client
I am very satisfied with the steps taken. It turns out that small steps together lead to a big result.
Assignment for Highberg
- Conduct a chain-wide analysis to identify the bottlenecks related to workload, quality, and future-proofing
- Design the desired future state by resolving the issues identified in the analysis
- Test the ideal situation in practice, improve it, and design new solutions where needed
- Implement the components that prove effective and continue iterating until the desired level is achieved
Tijmen Voet, Head of Network Development & Design
Despite the increased complexity, we will never go out of control again.
Our approach
Analysis phase: including interviews, shadowing days, observations, data analyses, surveys, and interpretation sessions with the internal improvement team.
Design phase: design of the future vision across workstreams (strategy, quality, collaboration, culture, integration) with a multidisciplinary team.
Implementation phase: testing the future vision per workstream using an agile approach and iterations, supported by workstream leads and MT sponsors.
Stakeholder, Governance & Operations
At BO (the recipient of the SD), we noticed that you were struggling with this. We now see real improvement on your side and are benefiting from it, so on behalf of myself and my BO colleagues—thank you!
Results
Chain-wide shared vision for desired cultural change: Focus on decisiveness, constructive dialogue, evaluating collaboration, and connecting areas of expertise.
Steps taken and continued to achieve the desired change: Clear strategy including translation into KPIs at team level, process improvements, clear role descriptions, meeting coaching, peer reviews, and feedback training.
Highlights from the employee survey within the SD:
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Acceptable workload within planning teams: from 43% to 72%
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Clarity on expectations per employee: from 63% to 84%
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NS has a clear vision that I support: from 58% to 68%
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The chain is a well-functioning collaborative unit: from 20% disagree to 100% agree
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Dialogue on KPIs & adjustments in case of deviations: from 75% to 37% disagree
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