Top Job Hazards Currently Facing Fleet Operations

What’s the cost of fleet accidents for your company? Probably higher than you think.

If you put non-CDL drivers out on the road, you face the risk of emptying out your pockets over an accident. Even a small accident like a fender bender or clipped mirror will cost you thousands of dollars.

The problem is, most companies don’t see it this way. That’s because there are both direct and indirect costs for fleet accidents. This article will explore both and how to reduce them.

What Does an Accident Cost You?

Your drivers face a high risk of causing or being involved in an accident.

Look at it this way: the average person drivers about 15,000 miles per year. They have a 1 in 15 chance of getting into an accident that year. Your drivers are on the road much more than the average person. That means their risk of a collision is higher. They could have a 1 in 10 chance of being involved in a collision or even greater.

What’s worse is these accidents are costing you.

One accident will cost your company anywhere from $16,000 to $75,000, even if it’s minor and no one’s hurt. That number skyrockets if there is a fatality involved. And guess what, you’re still paying even if it wasn’t your employee’s fault.

Direct And Indirect Costs of Accidents

The figures we shared may seem a bit high to you. It’s hard to imagine a minor accident costing you tens of thousands of dollars. That’s because there are both direct and indirect costs to accidents.

Direct costs of accidents are what you pay immediately. Indirect costs are the ones that sneak up on you.

The Direct Cost of Fleet Accidents

Here are some common direct costs of fleet accidents. These are the obvious costs, but still, they add up quickly.

• Vehicle repairs
• Repairs to property damage
• Fines resulting from your employees’ having a traffic violation
• Legal representation
• Court fines
• OSHA fines
• Insurance deductible and premiums
• Workers’ compensation injuries not covered by insurance

These costs alone are enough to make a dent in your profit margins. However, the cost of loss doesn’t stop there.

The Indirect Cost of Fleet Accidents

You pay out of pocket when you have an accident. However, accidents are more damaging to your company than just the direct, upfront costs. The indirect costs of an accident spread out like a spider web throughout your company.

Consider the following:

• Increased insurance premiums and deductible
• Administrative time spent by supervisors, safety personnel, and administrative employees dealing with the accident
• Loss of time from the employee who was involved in the collision
• Training a replacement driver if necessary
• Lost productivity due to rescheduling
• Damaged reputation and the ensuing loss of business
• Depending on your business model, loss of business for not getting to a customer location

These costs are often ignored or unmeasured, but make no mistake about it – they’re present and they are impacting your business.

Download eBook: How to Choose a Defensive Driver Safety Program

Accidents Are Preventable

The cost of fleet accidents can pile up and overwhelm you and your company. However, there’s good news in all of this. Accidents are preventable.

People have accidents when they take too much risk, when they drive unsafely, and when they don’t know proper defensive driving techniques.

We shared some statistics earlier about how your employees could have as much as a 1 in 10 chance of causing a collision. Those statistics go out the window if you invest in defensive driving training for your non-CDL or light-duty vehicle drivers.

It’s possible to reduce your accidents to zero.

Top Job Hazards Currently Facing Fleet Operations

Your non-CDL driver accidents and injuries are costing you money. Worse yet, they result in pain and suffering. If you want to reduce accidents, injuries, and cost of loss, you need to invest in risk-reduction measures. However, not all risks are created equally. This article will cover the top three job hazards currently facing fleet operations and how you can reduce them.

Why Is It Important to Prevent Accidents?

This seems like a question that’s too obvious to cover. Even so, fleet managers and operators repeatedly fail to reduce the risks and hazards that result in driver accidents.

Driving is the most dangerous thing your non-CDL drivers do. Whether they’re spraying for pests, fixing plumbing issues, or repairing an electrical box, they face the biggest risk of accidents and injuries when they get behind the wheel.

That means you face risk as well.

According to OSHA, a minor vehicular accident will cost a company over $16,000. An accident that results in any sort of injury will cost over $70,000. An accident resulting in a major injury or death will cost a company $500,000 or more.

Even if this has never happened to your company, you still face this risk. The companies it happens to thought it wouldn’t happen to them either. A major accident has the potential to put you out of business.

Luckily, accidents are entirely preventable. Accidents happen as a result of unsafe behaviors. If you invest in effective training solutions, you can reduce unsafe behaviors and prevent accidents.

Taking into account the cost of accidents, if a training program could reduce even minor accidents, it would pay for itself and then some.

What Are The Top Three Job Hazards For Fleet Operations?

Like we said, not all risk was created equal. Your drivers face countless hazards when behind the wheel. However, some of these are much more likely to result in accidents than others.

If you focus on reducing the following three unsafe behaviors, you can prevent a large number of accidents at your company:

• Distracted driving
• Failure to maintain a safe following distance
• Unsafe driving at intersections

1.  Distracted Driving

Distracted driving is the leading cause of accidents. If you think it doesn’t impact your company, you’re wrong. Nearly every person is guilty of distracted driving at some point.

Distracted driving can include:

• Texting
• Talking on the phone
• Daydreaming
• Eating/drinking
• Talking to passengers
• And much more

Even one second of not paying attention behind the wheel can lead to an accident.

Not only is distracted driving a major cause of accidents, but it often leads to more serious accidents. Distracted driving is a leading cause of fatal accidents due to high-speed collisions and pedestrian/cyclist strikes.

We guarantee that your drivers are putting themselves at risk by driving distracted.

Preventing Distracted Driving

The first step a company should take is implementing rules and policies on distracted driving. This sends the message that you care about safety and that, when behind the wheel, nothing matters more than driving.

However, on their own, rules and regulations will do little to prevent accidents. People break rules all the time.

We cover it more in-depth in this article, but you should take these steps to reduce distracted driving accidents at your company:

• Educate your drivers on the dangers of distracted driving
• Train your drivers to be attentive behind the wheel
• Only select and hire safety-conscious employees

2. Failure to Maintain a Safe Following Distance

Another leading cause of accidents is the failure to maintain a safe following distance. When your drivers don’t leave enough room in front of them, they put themselves at risk of serious accidents.

It’s simple: if you can’t stop in time, you’re going to have accidents.

Improper following distance often results in the following accidents, all of which can have severe consequences:

• Rear-end collisions from not being able to stop in time
• Being hit from behind after suddenly stopping
• Sideswipes from avoiding rear-end collisions
• Off-road incidents from making evasive maneuvers
• Rollovers from suddenly needing to change directions

These accidents can and often are fatal. Worse yet, we guarantee it’s a problem for your drivers.

How to Ensure Your Drivers Leave Enough Room

As common as the accidents we mentioned above are, they’re so easy to prevent. Your drivers just need to leave enough room in front of them.

How much room should they leave? It depends on the vehicle type. See below for minimum safe following distances based on vehicle class:

• Class 1 & 2 vehicles (Vans, sedans, and light-duty trucks): 3 seconds
• Class 3 & 4 vehicles: 4 seconds
• Class 5 vehicles: 5 seconds
• Class 6 vehicles: 6 seconds
• Class 7 vehicles and up: 7 seconds or more

Your drivers should have their minimum safe following distance for their vehicle type memorized. And, they should never follow someone too closely. Of course, you need to implement effective safety training to get them there:

• Invest in online defensive driving training focused on maintaining a safe following distance
• Host monthly safety meetings to discuss loss-leaders like not leaving enough room
• Do ride-alongs with your drives to ensure they leave enough room in front of them

Download eBook: How to Choose a Defensive Driver Safety Program

3. Unsafe Driving at Intersections

Intersections are the most dangerous driving environment your employees face.

Intersections pose the risk of:

• Rear-end collisions
• Side-swipes
• Fixed object strikes
• T-bone accidents
• Head-on collisions
• Pedestrian and cyclist collisions

Your drivers’ risk of these collisions goes up at intersections because of all the variables. Other vehicles, people on the road, and changing traffic patterns increase the chance of accidents.

Your drivers need to know how to safely navigate intersections in order to prevent these common and costly accidents.

Preventing Accidents at Intersections

To reduce your accidents and cost of loss, implement an online defensive driving program that teaches drivers the following:

• Look Ahead for risk at intersections. As you approach an intersection, Look Ahead for other vehicles, pedestrians, turn-only lanes, and the status of the light.

• Cover your brake as you approach an intersection. You must always be prepared to stop.

• Yellow means stop. Never speed up to make a yellow light. Slow down and come to a safe stop. Remember: it’s better to be late than it is to have an accident.

• Look Around before entering the intersection. Scan the intersection for risk. Before entering the intersection, should look left, right, then left again to make sure it’s clear.

• Look Around before turns. Turns are a common cause of accidents at intersections. Look around, check your blindspots, and check the intersection before making a turn.

If you educate your drivers on these safe practices, you will have fewer accidents – guaranteed.

Accidents Can Be Prevented

Accidents don’t “just happen.” They are caused by people and their unsafe behaviors. When your drivers don’t prioritize safe, defensive driving, they put themselves and your company at risk.

The good news is that accidents can be prevented. If you invest in safety programs that reduce your non-CDL drivers’ unsafe behaviors, you will have fewer accidents.

This means your employees make it home safe, you will have a more efficient operation, and your cost of loss will plummet.

Investing in safety is a win for everyone involved.

Fleet Vehicle Maintenance and Repair Tips to Keep Your Drivers Safe

You need simple solutions to reduce your fleet’s cost of loss. One way to do so is to focus on fleet vehicle maintenance and repairs.

Why is Fleet Maintenance Important?

If you’ve read our blogs before, you know we care deeply about reducing cost of loss. We discuss ways to implement safety training to reduce your cost of accidents and insurance premiums. However, defensive driving and safety training isn’t the only way to reduce cost of loss.

Your unexpected breakdowns and maintenance issues are costing you big time. Consider the following costs associated with a vehicle breakdown:

• Large repair costs
• Towing expenses
• Lost time of your employees’

Not only that, but breakdowns on public roads are extremely dangerous. Your employees’ risk of accidents and injuries skyrocket when they are outside of their vehicle or even sitting in it on the side of the road.

With all that in mind, a single vehicular breakdown can cost you well over a thousand dollars. The cost can be exponentially higher if it leads to an employee injury.

Preventative maintenance and repairs on your fleet vehicles are key components to running an efficient and profitable business.

Fleet Vehicle Maintenance Strategies

If you don’t have a plan in place for maintaining and repairing your fleet vehicles, you run the risk of unexpected breakdowns and damages. These are costly and dangerous to your employees. So, what’s the solution?

Here are four key components to keeping up with vehicle maintenance to avoid high costs of loss:

1. Vehicle pre and post-trip inspections
2. Fleet vehicle maintenance logs
3. Assign vehicle repairs, maintenance, and inspections to someone
4. Defensive driving training to prevent damage

Pre-trip and Post-trip Inspections

If you want to put safe vehicles out on the road, your drivers must be completing pre-trip and post-trip inspections.

These inspections are completed and logged by drivers before and after driving a company vehicle. Pre-trip and post-trip inspections are essential because they catch issues before they become a problem.

Read Blog: Are Your Non-CDL Drivers Following These Steps Before Driving to a Job?

Here are some keys to correctly implementing pre-trip and post-trip inspections at your company:

• Drivers should be trained on how to complete these inspections thoroughly and consistently
• Drivers should have a Driver Vehicle Inspection Form (DVIR) that they fill out and give to maintenance
• Make sure drivers know when to NOT drive a vehicle – certain vehicle maintenance issues are too severe

If you’re looking for information on what specifically drivers should be checking during vehicle inspections, check out this article.

Fleet Vehicle Maintenance Logs

Not all fleet vehicle repairs will cost the same.

According to this article, preventative maintenance can be 30 to 50% cheaper than required maintenance.

Think of it this way: it costs much less to replace tires than it does to replace the entire wheel of the vehicle. When you take the time to do preventative fleet vehicle maintenance, you can reduce your cost of loss.

It’s essential you know what preventative maintenance needs done and when to do it.

You should complete fleet vehicle maintenance based on:

• Vehicle type
• Vehicle mileage
• Vehicle condition and operating conditions
• Time since last service check
• Hours in operation
• Frequency of vehicle use

There are fleet maintenance logs and software systems available to help you track all of this.

Assign Fleet Vehicle Maintenance to Someone

When something belongs to everyone, it belongs to no one. In other words, if you don’t assign a task to someone on your team, it won’t get done.

You need to either hire someone or assign a current employee the following responsibilities:

• Tracking fleet vehicle maintenance logs
• Ensuring pre-trip and post-trip inspections are completed
• Ensuring preventative and necessary maintenance is complete
• Researching essential maintenance for each vehicle type

If one person is dedicated to these tasks and help accountable, you can ensure they will be adequately completed.

Defensive Driving Training to Prevent Damage

If you have vehicles, you will have vehicle repairs. However, if you have unsafe drivers, you may have more vehicle repairs than you can handle.

Accidents cost your company money. They raise insurance premiums, result in lost time, potentially lead to workers’ comp, and almost always result in damage to the vehicle.

You don’t need to accept accidents as a fact of life. There are high-quality safety training programs available to help you reduce accidents. A program like The Fleet Safety Course guarantees a reduction in accidents and cost of loss by 20% or more.

A 20% reduction in accidents means you could save millions of dollars in cost of loss.

Be Proactive With Vehicle Maintenance

Don’t leave vehicle maintenance up to chance. If you ignore a problem today, it will cost you twice as much tomorrow.

Have your drivers complete vehicle inspections, use fleet vehicle maintenance logs, assign fleet maintenance to one person, and implement effective safety training.

This four-tiered approach to vehicle maintenance will save you money while protecting your people.

How to Host Safety Training Online

Traditional safety and driver training happens in the classroom, or behind the wheel, and is led by an instructor. These are both important aspects of an effective safety training program, but they aren’t your only options. Save time, money, and resources by moving your safety training online.

Learning Management System – The Cornerstone of Online Training

If you want to host safety training online, you need a learning management system (LMS).

An LMS is the most important tool for any organization looking to invest in online training. It is a software tool companies use to develop, deliver, host, and track training for their employees.

With an LMS, you can:

• Store and organize all of your company’s training courses/materials in one place
• Communicate with everyone in the system with a few clicks
• Automatically assign training to various employee groups
• Track usage and run reports

From your drivers’ side of things, an LMS allows them to:

• Access training courses from anywhere with an internet connect
• Access training courses on any smart device or computer
• Engage with activities and exercises within the training course
• Take training on their own schedule

Moving your training online with a learning management system has benefits for everyone involved.

If you’re looking for world-class driver training hosted on an LMS, check out The Fleet Safety Course. You can get 14-day free access by clicking this link.

Online Instructor-Led Training

We mentioned that traditional learning is usually instructor-led. Believe it or not, moving your training online actually makes this model of employee training easier.

With typical instructor-led training, you rely on your team to:

• Create PowerPoints
• Find YouTube videos
• Develop questions and activities

This is an inefficient process that is not guaranteed to produce valuable learning outcomes.

Instead, you can use an LMS to host all of your training courses and videos. This allows your instructors to easily access the required training material whether they’re hosting an in-person training session or doing it over Zoom.

Then, you can go into the system and quickly record everyone who attended the training.

Download eBook: How to Choose a Defensive Driver Safety Program

Online Self-Directed Training

This is the most powerful training option you unlock with an LMS.

A learning management system allows you to assign online self-directed training to your employees.

Self-directed training is an extremely useful option for most companies. With self-directed training, you can:

• Assign essential safety and driver training at the point of hire
• Conduct follow-up and refresher training on an automated schedule
• Assign remedial training after an accident or incident

Self-directed training has powerful learning outcomes for adult learners. Adult learners want to feel in control of the learning process. They want to be able to take training on their own time and schedule. And, they don’t want to be struggling to stay awake in a classroom.

Not only does self-directed training have great outcomes, but it’s cheaper too. When you implement self-directed training, you can avoid paying instructors and skip the headache of trying to get everyone together in the same place.

When implementing online self-directed training, we recommend:

• • Communicate your expectations to your employees. Tell them up front how important this training is, what they stand to gain from it, and when they need to complete it. Be crystal clear.

• Assign training at the point of hire. Show that your company cares about safety. Ask that your employees complete their online self-directed training before even showing up for their first day. This makes the orientation and onboarding process smoother and saves your instructors time.

• Pay your employees for their time. Offer some type of stipend for completion of training. This sets a good precedent for your employees and encourages them to complete the training and not just walk out the door.

Modernize Your Training Program

Regardless of how you handle training today, moving your training online will improve it.

You will benefit from better learning outcomes, better results, and quicker training time – all while spending less time, money, and resources on training than ever before.

If you want to learn more about how to implement online driver training, book a free consultation with us at this link.

The Benefits of a COVID-19 Training Video

From March to present, movie theaters have remained closed. Stores are struggling to keep up with increased demand for home goods. Many ICU’s are running out of beds. Truck drivers are dealing with closed rest-stops. Transit bus companies have seen a huge dip in riders. No matter who you are, COVID-19 has no doubt impacted your business. It won’t be like this forever, and some businesses are seeing their customers returning with a post-quarantine rise in demand for goods and services. The problem is, COVID-19 isn’t going anywhere. How can you help ensure your employees’ safety as they return to work? A COVID-19 training video could be the answer.

The Benefits of a COVID-19 Training Video

Your business may be experiencing a rise in demand, but things are far from “business as usual.” Ignoring the risk of infection could be disastrous to your business. Not to mention, it’s irresponsible and puts your employees, you, and countless others at risk of contracting COVID-19. You have to take control of the situation and stop the spread of the virus. A COVID-19 training video is a great way to do so.

With a training video on COVID-19, you and your employees will benefit from:

• A centralized location for all COVID-19 risk-reduction procedures
• The pertinent risk-prevention information readily available, while filtering out the nonsense
• Out-come based learning that will reduce people’s risk of spreading the virus
• Peace of mind that your company is taking action against the spread of the virus

Should You Go Custom or Generic? 

The benefits of a COVID-19 training video are clear. However, you have to ask yourself one important question that most people overlook. Should you use a custom or generic video?

A generic video is one that already exists. It was created to be universal enough to apply to many different companies. It may even work across different industries. A custom video, however, is one made specifically for your company. It will say, show, and teach exactly what you want it to.

There are pros and cons for each. Keep these benefits in mind when choosing what type of training video suits your needs:

If you’re interested in custom video lessons, please contact us here.

It’s Not Too Late to Take Action

The virus has been impacting the entire world for the better part of the year. Even so, if you’re still in business, it’s not too late to take action. Protect your employees today by investing in a COVID-19 training video. Some resources towards prevention today could keep you in business tomorrow. Better yet, it could save lives.

How to Provide Effective Employee Feedback

The vast majority of people come to work every day with great intentions. They want to do well, succeed in their role, and achieve positive results. Of course, people frequently fall short of these goals. When employees don’t achieve your desired results, it can be frustrating, but have you ever thought of it from their perspective? Have you made it clear what is expected of them? If you want your employees to succeed, you have to make sure you’re both aligned on job performance expectations. One way to do that is by providing effective feedback.

What is Feedback?

Feedback is a form of communication to employees aimed at their job performance.  Giving employees honest feedback can be difficult and many new leaders avoid it.  However, without feedback, your employees can’t learn their jobs and what is expected of them.

Feedback is objective information about job performance.  Even when negative, it is not intended to belittle or berate employees and should not be used in that way. Demeaning or overly harsh feedback can lead to serious problems with motivation and performance.

There are four important questions every employee wants an answer for that they may never actually ask about.

1. What’s My Job?
2. How Am I Doing?
3. What’s My Place in this Organization?
4. Does Anybody Care?

Feedback helps answer these questions.  Your employees may not ask them out loud, but you can be sure they’re thinking about them – and your job is to answer them!

There are two main types of feedback: Developmental feedback and Motivational feedback.  You need to be able to use both to get the most out of your employees.

Developmental Feedback

Developmental feedback is aimed at teaching or instructing employees on how to do their job better.  An example is telling an employee that their paperwork is incomplete and then teaching them how to fill it out properly.

For developmental feedback to be useful to employees, it must present constructive ideas for improvement rather than come across as insulting or insensitive.

Developmental Feedback should be:

• objective
• based on observable behaviors
• accurately reflect what the employee did
• given close in time to the actual performance
• focused on the BEHAVIOR, not the PERSON
• related to performance goals and expectations
• used to teach alternative behaviors

Motivational Feedback

Motivational feedback is aimed at energizing, directing, or sustaining behavior.  This type of feedback is generally used as reinforcement when an employee is doing a good job or to encourage them to strive even more.

To be effective, Motivational Feedback should be specific.  You want your employees to understand exactly what they are doing well.  Motivational feedback must be genuine and sincere.  Too often, supervisors will give half-hearted compliments.   It must be frequent –don’t wait for the annual performance review to tell them what they are doing well.

Improving Your Employee’s Job Performance

You need to provide both developmental and motivational feedback.  The two go hand in hand and answer, one way or another, all four questions mentioned above.

All employees want to know how they’re doing.  They want an opportunity to improve and build on mistakes as well as be recognized for success.  If you don’t provide feedback, your employees will be left in the dark. Help your employees to come out of the dark and read the writing on the wall.  They crave it and, if delivered appropriately, they will accept and use the feedback to make sure they are on the right track. It’s not always comfortable giving someone negative feedback, but it’s necessary to keep your operation running smoothly.

Again, keep in mind that both motivational and developmental feedback are equally important. Your employees want to know how they can get better, but they also want to know when they’ve done a good job. A well balanced diet of both types of feedback and necessary follow up will yield greater job performance from your employees.

Three Simple Reasons Drivers Quit – Part Two

In our last blog on driver retention, we discussed three common reasons drivers quit. We showed you a few methods based around these reasons that you can use to retain more drivers. In this article, we’re going to take a step back, though. What’s the big deal with retention, why are so many drivers quitting, and how do we stop the driver shortage?

If you ask most people in the industry, they would say we’ve been dealing with a driver shortage for the last decade. The American Trucking Association reported that truck driver turnover was ninety-six percent in 2019. It doesn’t look any better for other industries. It’s no wonder that people think there just aren’t enough drivers. You don’t need me to tell you that good drivers are hard to come-by, but the truth is we aren’t suffering through a driver shortage.

There’s Not a Shortage, But There is a Problem

When you go to the store, there are groceries. When you go to the pump, there’s fuel. When you need a ride to work, there will be a bus pulling-up to the stop. Goods are being delivered and services are being provided. If not by you, then by your competition. If there were a shortage, we would see empty shelves at the stores and cancelled bus routes. There would be no one to fulfill these essential services. So, there’s no shortage of drivers, but clearly there’s a problem. We call it the driver problem.

“I never have enough drivers. I’m drowning in compliance paperwork. I’m constantly focused on putting out the next fire, accident, or incident. And, I have as many drivers walking out the back door as the front door.” That’s how Scott Rea, president of Avatar Fleet, describes the driver problem. It affects nearly every transportation company in the nation, large or small.

The difference between a “driver shortage” and a “driver problem” probably sounds nit-picky. Afterall, you’re suffering the same results, right? You have a hard time finding and retaining quality drivers. That’s true, but it’s actually an important distinction to make. If it were a driver shortage, you’d be helpless. You would need government intervention or a mass arrival of new drivers to the job market. However, since you have a driver problem and not a shortage, you have solutions at your disposal.

Solving Your Driver Problem: Stop the Revolving Door

The driver problem is a complex one. As such, there’s no silver bullet to solving it. There are so many factors that one, single action could never completely solve the issue at hand. However, a good place to start is with retention. Currently, you race to fill positions as drivers quit. Your company has a revolving door with drivers coming in and out. It’s time to stop the revolving door. Focus on retention so you can keep the good drivers you already have.

Remember the three common reasons drivers quit? They’re attention and respect, pay issues, and a voice at the table. It’s important to know why drivers quit because, with that knowledge, you can start improving your retention from the source. But when drivers do quit, where do they go? Usually, they go to drive for another company in the same industry. They’re looking for better treatment, more respect, less pay issues, and all the things they couldn’t get from you. The irony is, they almost never end-up in a better position.

Churn vs. Turnover

While your company may suffer from high turnover, that’s not the full story for the transportation industry. The vast majority of truck drivers that quit one company don’t exit the industry; they move onto another transportation company. It’s called churn, and it works in your favor.

Since most drivers are shuffling from one company to another, you have a chance to stop the shuffle at you. They’re looking for better treatment, more respect from their management, and a company that values their drivers. Give that to them. Treat your drivers better. Where your competition falls short, you can succeed.

Where Do I Start?

So, we’ve said that you need to treat your drivers better in order to solve your driver problem. That’s easier said than done, of course. Again, there’s no silver bullet. You need a plan to change your company culture and you need to stick to it. You need employees at all levels to buy into the plan. You need to get to the source of your driver problem and stop the revolving door. Here are three good places to start.

Make a Declaration

Declare from the top to the bottom of your company that you will solve your driver retention problems. Change starts at the top because people do what they think their boss cares about. Make it clear to your entire company that retaining all-star drivers and treating them well is a top priority. To really get your message across, assign driver retention evaluation to the highest possible executive. Everyone in your company will know you’re serious and that this isn’t just another flavor of the month.

Tie KPI to Retention

Create driver retention key performance indicators for all levels of the company. Give bonuses, raises, and promotions based on these KPI’s. This way, everyone realizes that driver retention is part of their job.

Create a Driver Check-In Process

You need to get yourself and front-line leaders face time with your drivers. Remember that drivers quit when they don’t feel like their voice is heard. Give them an opportunity to speak their mind with driver check-ins. Spread the workload across all your departments, from dispatcher, to pay-roll, to managers. Even if the check-ins only last a few minutes, you’ll have a better chance of solving issues for your drivers that would otherwise go unnoticed and cause them to quit.

Turn Your Front-line Leaders into Retention Experts

Your dispatchers, managers, and supervisors interact with your drivers every day. They have the most say in whether a driver stays or quits. You need them to be experts on driver retention, and our Leadership Development Course can help. The Leadership Development Course is designed specifically for front-line leaders in the transportation industry. It provides them with the knowledge and skills necessary to reduce turnover and improve your drivers’ work-lives.

Remember, there is not a driver shortage, but you may personally experience one if you don’t solve your retention issues. If you want more drivers coming in than are going out, it’s time you got serious about retention.

Three Simple Reasons Drivers Quit

From trucking to bussing and everywhere in between, transportation companies are desperate to hire more drivers. It’s beginning to show in driver wages. On the trucking side of things, 2018 was the start of what some call the “war for drivers.” According to a report from the National Transportation Institute, there have been massive increases in driver wages in an attempt to attract, hire, and retain the best of the best. Wages have continued to rise since. It’s unclear how much this has helped though as driver turnover spiked in 2019. So, if it’s not more money, how can you convince your best drivers to stay? It starts with understanding reasons drivers quit.

3 Reasons Drivers Quit

As we’ve learned from countless interviews with drivers, here are three common reasons drivers quit:

• Attention & respect
• Pay
• A voice at the table

Instead of throwing more and more money at the problem, start with these three reasons. Get to the source of your drivers’ concerns.

Attention & Respect

You can’t change the job or change how your drivers feel about the job. You can, however, change how you treat your drivers. It’s an uncomfortable truth, but most people don’t quit a job; they quit their boss. You can make a big impact on your retention problems by always treating your drivers with respect and common courtesy. Learn your drivers’ names. Greet them every time you see them. If a driver comes to you with a concern, take it seriously. These are easy steps to take that are sure to have positive outcomes.

Pay

Who doesn’t want a raise or a nice yearly bonus? These can have a positive impact on retention, but as we learned from the data, it’s not guaranteed to help. Sometimes, all that drivers want is to understand how they get paid. When drivers don’t understand how they’re getting paid or what’s included in a paycheck, they assume you’re cheating them. When drivers feel like they’re being cheated, they’re of course more likely to quit.

You need to have a simple and easy-to-understand payment system. Then, once the system is as simple as it can be, you need to train your drivers on how it works. Make sure every new hire can properly fill out the necessary paperwork. Transparency is key. This effort up-front can save you a lot of money and problems later.

A Voice at The Table

Drivers are more likely to quit when they feel their voices aren’t heard. You can improve this in the little things. Listen to your drivers when they have a complaint. Even if there’s nothing you can do, simply listening to your drivers when they do have a complaint can go a long way. There are larger organizational changes you can make for bigger impacts. For example, you can form a driver committee of your veteran drivers. Allow them to have a say in company decisions that affect them. This will show your drivers that they work a company that cares about them. They’ll be less likely to leave because they know it’s hard to get that anywhere else.

Get Serious About Retention

The wage war is on for drivers, and while giving raises and bonuses can help, it won’t work on its own. If you want to solve your turnover issues, it’s time you get serious about retention strategies. Changing what someone is paid is simple. Changing how they’re treated is difficult. Of course, with great efforts come great reward.

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing more blogs on driver retention. We’ll give you tips and tricks to reduce your turnover. We’ll give you insight that will help you look at driver retention differently. Most importantly, we’ll give you guidance to help you grow your company through your fleet of all-star drivers.

Want to get started on improving how your drivers are treated today? Check out our Leadership Development Course. It’s designed to provide transportation frontline leaders the necessary knowledge and skills to improve driver retention. The information comes straight from experts in the transportation industry.

Time Management is Actually Self-Management

How do you manage time?  Time is uncontrollable. It’s constantly moving forward, and once it’s gone, you can’t get it back.  The truth is, we can’t manage time, but we can manage ourselves. Time management is really all about making good choices. It’s managing what we do and when we do it.

The minute-to-minute, day-to-day choices we make have a huge impact on how we spend our time.  Good choices lead to efficient use of time.  So really, time management is self-management.

What Does Good Time Management Look Like?

Spending your day in a whirlwind of activity almost guarantees that you’ll actually get less done.  You go home thinking you had a tough day, and you did, but putting out fires isn’t productive.

Have you ever watched someone who is really good at their job?  They seem to get a lot done without much effort.  In fact, sometimes they make the job look easy. But really what’s happening is they’re doing the right things, the right way, the first time every time. Time management can happen inside a two minute task, or take an entire year of planning and preparation. It’s all about efficiency.

The Myth of Multitasking

So, time management is all about efficiency. Easy enough to understand. Now I’ll tell you what it’s NOT about. Multitasking. It’s impossible to multitask, or at least it’s impossible to multitask the way people typically think about it.

We usually view multitasking as doing many things at the same time. In reality, multitasking is switching back and forth between two different tasks, and it makes both tasks take much longer than they normally would.

For example, you could easily say the entire alphabet from A to Z in no time. Similarly, you could count out loud from 1 to 26 in a matter of seconds. However, if you try to do them simultaneously, A 1, B 2, C 3, D 4 and so on, it would take you a LOT longer than doing them one at a time. When we have to shift back and forth between tasks, we waste time and accomplish less.

Too Many Balls in the Air

Multitasking is a myth. In reality, you’re much better off sticking to one task or solving one problem at a time.

In any given day, you might have to get a new employee started, solve a customer complaint and send someone out to help with a vehicle breakdown. They’re all important, but they can only be done one at a time. If we try to do them all at the same time, we’re less efficient.  It may feel like we’re multi-tasking, but we’re really just doing one thing at a time and switching between the tasks. We lose efficiency every time we turn our attention from one thing to another. Trying to multitask is rough on us: rather than saving time, it costs time.  It’s less efficient, we make more mistakes, and it depletes our energy.

Using A Planner to Manage Your Time

There are a few tried and true, simple ways to help us make better use of the time we have. One such strategy is utilizing a planner. Using planners is a must for a manager, supervisor or anyone that has a wide range of responsibilities. Whether you’re old school and use a Franklin planner or utilize newer software such as Outlook, Google Calendar or Trello, planners help you stay to task.

You should have a plan for your career, the upcoming year, month, week and day.  You should know ahead of time what you’re going to do, or least what you want to be doing. Planners are where you keep those plans.

If you come to work without a plan, you’re forced to spend the day reacting to the demands of the job.  Of course, reacting to demands is part of the job, but it shouldn’t be the whole job.  Plan each month a month in advance, even if it’s pretty loose. For example, a monthly goal might be to hire 3 new employees. Of course, for a larger undertaking like that, the planning doesn’t stop there.

Plan YOUR Plan Ahead of Time

Plan each week a week in advance. If your monthly goal is to hire three new employees, one week’s goal might be to tweak or increase your recruiting efforts. Another week you might have the goal of conducting several interviews with potential hires.

From weekly plans, you move to daily plans. Make a specific plan for each day and know what you’ll have accomplished by the end of the week. If your weekly plan was to begin the recruiting process, one of your daily goals might be to investigate where you currently recruit and decide if you need to advertise jobs in new places.

Then, look over tomorrow’s plan before you leave for the day.  It should already be written down or entered into your electronic or physical calendar. Your plan needs to be written, or it isn’t a plan.

This is just one way to more effectively manage your time. There are of course many more strategies but understanding that multitasking isn’t helpful and utilizing planners is a great place to start making better use of the time you have.