Workshops the afternoon of Thursday, Jan. 30, at the ACS/TCA annual Recruiting and Retention Conference in Nashville, Tenn., turned to the subject of retention, prime in an industry where the national average annualized turnover rate tops 100 percent.
While plenty of new methods of data collection and analysis from various vendors — including those of Stay Metrics and Fleet Risk Advisors — were discussed as ways to anticipate driver needs, John Elliott, CEO of expediter Load One, and others stressed the best way to keep drivers happy was to treat them as equal participants in the company. Avoid a “two-class system,” Elliott said, that separates drivers from office staff in company culture.
“It’s great to analyze and do numbers and all of that,” he added, but “if you’re not starting it out right” with an honest message the moment you recruit a driver, “you’re just putting water in a boat with holes in it.”
Elliott’s presentation flashed to an image of a NO DRIVERS BEYOND THIS POINT sign, one he said was far too common at carriers around the nation. “We have a very open office,” he said of Load One, “like a big open mall. You’d be amazed the perception that that changes. [Drivers] go tour our dispatch [during orientation and they say], ‘Wow. We never got to see dispatch at our old company.'” At Load One, he’s quick to rejoin, “you can go there anytime.”
Presentations by representatives from Hirschbach Motor Lines as well as Artur Express, the latter 100 percent owner-operator and the former with a large majority of drivers in truck-lease-purchase arrangements, revealed the importance of both building empathy and managing expectations with truth — particularly relative to carrier-owner-operator relationships.
“Retention starts with recruiting,” said Hirschbach Recruiting Director Greg Finzen. “I’ve tried to make some changes there. We look at what I call a ‘conversational’ recruiting technique, based on listening rather than a recitation of programs.” Chiefly, however, Finzen added recruiters try to manage expectations by “providing the applicants with expectations that align with what they find when they start.”
Several others stressed the honesty factor in truly successful retention programs. John Simms of the HNI Truck Group gave the example of a carrier he was helping revamp an orientation program who’d seen a turnaround in their turnover rate. “I asked the head of recruiting how they’d done it,” he said. The answer: “We stopped lying to them.”
