Taxis are fundamental to public transport in the Kingdom. The Saudization of the sector seemed like a win-win. Locals would get jobs and because they knew their area, spoke the language and had grown up with an understanding of the Kingdom’s culture, the quality of service would improve.
Unfortunately, as reports this week make clear, exactly the opposite has happened. Taxi companies are finding it hard to recruit Saudi drivers. It is also just as hard to keep them in jobs which the drivers themselves often regard as stop-gap employment, until something better comes along. Worse, the quality of service has degenerated when Saudis have been hired to drive limousines.
There is something seriously wrong here. Taxi driving is a relatively easy job and under the Saudization rules, is not badly paid. The hours can be long and anti-social, it is true, but not every taxi driver will be required to work at nights. It is also an interesting occupation, in which a driver will meet a wide variety of people. If he proves satisfactory, he may well find himself being asked for by name by the same clients.
The main skill involved boils down to courtesy, to both passengers and other drivers. Building up a knowledge of city neighborhoods is of course important, but this is something that can be achieved over time, or in special training trips led by experienced drivers.
In New York, top limousine chauffeurs are tested for the smoothness of their driving by having a plate with a ball in it, secured to the bonnet of the automobile. They are required to drive so smoothly, with such anticipation of road conditions ahead, that the ball stays in the plate. Brake too hard or step on the gas too much, or corner too fast and the ball rolls out and the driver has failed.
It is very hard to imagine any driver in the Kingdom, let alone taxi drivers, being able to do that. Yet the principal of proper training for what is not, in truth, a mundane job, ought to be there. Just because a man can drive, does not mean that he will make a good taxi driver, which is a service industry that demands much more than running customers from A to B.
Maybe the problem that the taxi companies are experiencing in recruiting and keeping the right quality drivers lies in the basic perception of the role. It appears menial. That it was for many years done by lower paid expatriates, merely enhances that view. It is beneath Saudis to take on such work and be ordered around by their passengers. The fact that it is so easy to get a taxi driving job, makes this impression even stronger.
What is needed surely is to raise the status of the work and of the taxi-driver himself. That can be done through pay, through training, and through competition for customers. It could also be achieved by a system of public recognition for outstanding service levels. Both drivers and their companies, with their dispatchers, could be honored, for instance, for the punctuality of booked rides.
Throughout workplaces in Saudi Arabia, the jobs that are done best are those undertaken by people who take a pride in their work. Taxi driving need be no exception to this rule. But at the moment the sector has the wrong sort of image, is attracting the wrong sort of candidate drivers and is doing nothing to foster a greater sense of dedication to the work.
Taxi companies will almost certainly protest that training is not part of their function and that any driver with a clean license and an ounce of common sense can get behind the wheel of one of their limousines. In this they are absolutely wrong.
The recruitment problems that they are facing demonstrate this clearly. A company with an ever-changing cast of drivers is not going to be efficient, because it will have constantly to address the same issues of new employees.
At some point, the penny is going to drop with at least one taxi firm, that if they can up their game, hire and keep good employees, major on their quality of service and punctuality, they are going to prosper hugely while wiping the floor with their competitors. In order to stay in business other taxi firms will be obliged to follow their example. Thus standards will be raised across the sector, young Saudis will feel they have worthwhile driving jobs and passengers will be extremely content.
Editorial: An image in need of polishing
