Transdev Portugal encourages more women to consider a career in bus driving through the "Mulheres ao Volante" campaign

• "Mulheres ao Volante" aims to attract more women to the bus driving profession and promote diversity within Transdev.
• Five drivers aged between 29 and 54 share their backgrounds, experiences and day-to-day working lives.
• The campaign showcases a range of transport  activities, including corporate services, tourism, long-distance routes, and urban and interurban networks.
• Transdev Portugal covers the cost of the required driving licence and professional training, and offers both full-time and part-time opportunities.
• The campaign is being rolled out across digital channels, on buses, newspapers, muppis, and through driving schools and employment agencies.

The driving profession is still frequently associated with a predominantly male environment. This perception may prevent some women from considering bus driving as a possible career, even when positions are open to all applicants.

Transdev Portugal launched “Mulheres ao Volante” in response to both a recruitment need and a perception challenge. The campaign aims to help women understand the profession, see themselves in the role and consider a career as a driver. It also supports diversity and equal opportunities within Transdev.

The approach is based on a simple idea: you cannot aspire to be what you do not see. . By making female drivers more visible, the campaign shows women that this is a career they can choose too.

“Mulheres ao Volante” features five Transdev drivers aged between 29 and 54. They have different professional backgrounds, lifestyles and personal experiences, showing that there is no single profile of a bus driver.

The campaign prioritises authentic employee stories rather than generic characters. The featured drivers come from different parts of Portugal and work in a range of operating environments. They share their own experiences, including both the aspects of the job they value and the challenges they encounter.

This approach allows potential candidates to discover different perspectives on the profession and  identify with a wider range of backgrounds. The message goes beyond stating that the profession is open to women. It provides concrete examples of the place women already occupy within it.

Bus driving is not a single, uniform professional experience. The campaign features several Transdev Portugal activities, including corporate services, tourism, long-distance routes, and urban and interurban networks.

Routines and challenges vary depending on the territory and the service being provided. The campaign therefore highlights the range of opportunities available and shows how the profession can correspond to different lifestyles, needs and career aspirations.

The campaign directly addresses several concerns that potential candidates may have, including work-life balance, shift work and driving large vehicles.

Transdev Portugal is also seeking to reduce qualification-related barriers. The company covers the cost of the required driving licence and professional training. This enables motivated people who do not yet hold the necessary qualifications to consider entering the profession.

The campaign also highlights stable employment, full-time and part-time opportunities, continued support and additional benefits.

“Mulheres ao Volante” is being shared on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as on websites, buses, and through driving schools and employment agencies. This combination of channels supports potential candidates throughout their journey, from discovering the profession to searching for an opportunity and submitting an application.

The content is tailored  to the role of each channel. Social media supports reach, audience segmentation and interaction. Video provides more space for employee stories. Websites facilitate the transition from interest to application. On buses, the message appears directly in the environment where the profession is practised and across the communities served by Transdev.

Through this campaign, Transdev Portugal is extending its employer brand strategy beyond the publication of job vacancies. The aim is also to increase awareness of Transdev as an employer and highlight the diversity of career paths available within the company.

Employee stories give professional opportunities a tangible and human dimension. They allow employees to describe their own experiences, rather than relying solely on the company to communicate its commitments to inclusion and diversity.

This approach connects talent attraction with retention. Onboarding, training, working conditions and development opportunities must remain consistent with the expectations created by recruitment communications.

The number of applications is an important indicator of the campaign’s performance, but it is not the only one. Transdev Portugal also plans to monitor reach, engagement, traffic to recruitment channels and conversion rates.

Over the longer term, the company wants to understand whether the campaign is increasing women’s interest in bus driving and changing perceptions of Transdev as an employer. Its evaluation will therefore cover communication, conversion and the longer-term evolution of perceptions.

“Mulheres ao Volante” is being rolled out in several phases. Following the publication of teasers and a main video on digital platforms, the campaign is being deployed across different regions and physical media. Individual interviews with the drivers are also planned in short formats for social media and longer versions for YouTube

This continued communication will present the employees’ backgrounds, activities, preferred aspects of the job and professional challenges without idealising their experiences. Internally, Transdev Portugal is also continuing to review the conditions offered to employees and potential areas for improvement.

Through this initiative, Transdev Portugal wants more women to consider bus driving as a possible career. More broadly, the campaign seeks to change perceptions of who can enter the profession and demonstrate the opportunities Transdev creates within the mobility sector.