Driver Employment Strategy

Trucking companies wishing to maintain adequate driver staffing levels need to have in place an effective Driver Employment Strategy.

There are two pieces to an effective Driver Employment Strategy - a Driver Retention Program and a Driver Recruiting Program - and together these programs work in concert to maintain optimal driver staffing levels while requiring the minimal amount of resources (capital and personnel).

Think of a Funnel.  The large end is your Recruiting Program, the small end is your Retention Program.

The relationship between the two ends is important to understand.  Increasing investment in the large end of the funnel does not improve Retention performance.  It simply opens up the funnel wider to increase the flow of applicants into the company.  When faced with high Driver Turnover, many companies respond by investing additional money in their recruiting efforts hoping to increase applicant flow to the point that offsets the flow of drivers out of the company.

On the other side of the funnel however, increasing investment in your Retention Program can have a significant impact on your Recruiting costs.  The more effective your Retention Program becomes, the less resources your company needs to invest in recruiting.

Many companies that become strapped for drivers throw more money at recruiting and ignore the powerful impact Driver Retention has on stabilizing the work force and reducing overall costs (recruiting costs and costs associated with driver turnover).   

To successfully compete for scarce driver resources, companies need to place as much or more emphasis on retention as the do recruiting.   That requires having a formal, funded Driver Retention Program that assigns high level accountability for Retention. 

Comments

[Dave Ward]

Retention of worthwhile employees is a desired outcome all trucking companies must pay attention too if they wish to keep needed human resources intact to support future business growth. Employee retention is an outcome, just like having a healthy culture, or an environment of open and honest communications, or a profitable company...etc. The tricky part is realizing it is a broad, hard to distinguish outcome and avoiding the temptation to isolate it as its own strategy. What matters is perception and the only perception that counts is that felt by the Employees. Management must understand the effect that program labels have upon Employees. Overemphasizing the wrong words when describing what might be a well intended initiative runs the risk of being mis-construed by the EE's as disingenuous....or worse yet, drawing attention to a problem that may only exist in few parts of the company.
Instead management should take the time to frame its own current reality relative to whatever human resource area needing improved. This avoids the ready, fire, aim - knee jerk reactions sometimes common by management teams anxious to solve a problem before they fully understand it's nature.
Preferably have a qualified 3rd party conduct confidential focus groups with randomly selected employees and gather enough data to draw solid conclusions as to the causes that lie at the foundation of the problem. Make as little little fanfare as possible, and certainly no promises, as to what can be expected. Just the fact that owners or management care enough to independently solicit the "good, the bad and ugly" within their company will communicate volumes towards who they really are, and the fact that they care enough to ask. Prioritize the current reality findings and have the courage to share the information back with all EE's. Do it quickly as the efficient LTL/TL company grapevine will otherwise turn your good intentions into EE skepticism. Decide on the most foundational of root causes that affect the OUTCOME you desire to improve...and then prioritize these. Watch the EE's spirits rise when you double back and include groups of them in developing realistic solutions. Teach them known constraints (like time and money) so they can in turn share this with other EE's and thus temper the expectations of the organization. After all this is trucking and margins are thin so solutions have to be cost effective and realistic. The EE's are very intelligent and must be treated and respected as such. They are a rich fountain of solutions if given the chance to contribute. Ensure programs are well laid out and properly developed with sufficient input at all levels. Avoid "catch all" type programs and solutions because they become to complex to know whats working that needs repeated and whats not working that needs stopped or changed. Involve your EE's in measuring success. They know best and remember in the end its only their perception that counts when addressing human resource type issues.
In this manner a broad outcome like improving retention can be broken into its workable sub-parts and addressed by both management and EE's. This is how culture is improved....from the bottom up and piece by piece...with all involved. It doesn't matter whether Union or Non-Union, TL or LTL, as people are people, and the vast majority of folks out there, regardless of their assigned work, have an enormous capacity to understand their companies current reality and contribute towards it improvement. Smart owners ensure to include their employee's thinking along with their own... and follow through by creating the right compensation programs sharing back with all that made success possible.