Like I said last year: here in The Netherlands and since Q4 2013 also in Germany, Transdev started enforcing new, strict rules about running on schedule in their companies. If you're too far behind schedule and it's something *you* as driver could've prevented, you get a warning. If you're running early (even as early as 3 minutes early - they measure it via the black box), you have to wait at the next stop (or sometimes next timing point, depends on the route) until you're back on schedule again. If not, you'll get a warning. 3 warnings and you're fired.
IIRC, Transdev wanted to enforce this on NICE as well starting Q2 2014. But maybe they've changed the date on that (wouldn't surprise me, sometimes they're quite unpredicatble ), I'll ask them next week.
Oh, I just received word that those new rules are to be put into effect on NICE at or around the final rollout of 'the new system' (by which they mean the first day of Clever, which was Q4 IIRC?). Well, better late than never, I'd say, although for image sake they should've put the new rules into effect by March 30th IMHO.