APRIL 18, 2019 – Is your company struggling with driver turnover? It’s a common problem in the industry today, with many fleets reporting 80-100 percent turnover among their drivers. This creates a constant hiring cycle that is not only time-consuming – it’s expensive.
And although news headlines the past few years will have you believing it’s a universal problem, there is a growing number of carriers that have figured out a way to keep their drivers on board longer. The key, they discovered, isn’t to invest all of their resources into wooing drivers in the pre-hire period with great benefit and compensation packages. Instead, what they’re also doing, is investing time into understanding the experience of their drivers post hire.
Why is This Important?
A study last year found that the quality of the onboarding process – as well as those first few months of employment – were directly related to the company’s retention rate. In fact, drivers who had a better experience during that post-hire period were 22 percent more likely to stay with the company for at least six months.
In an industry that is grappling with hiring and retention issues, this number is huge. It also indicates that companies have much more control over their turnover rate than they may have realized. The key, is to understand drivers’ pain points, as well as what changes your company could make now, that would benefit your drivers (and your retention rate) the most.
Learn What Your Drivers Care About
The best way to see how satisfied your current and former drivers are with your company, is to actively collect and monitor post-hire data. This can be done through:
- Exit interviews. Drivers tend to be more honest about their employment experience when they already have one foot out the door. Make sure to ask questions about the quality of your onboarding process, as well as any ongoing issues the driver experienced during his employment that might have prevented him from leaving.
- Online reviews. Current and former employees will often leave reviews on websites such as Glassdoor, Indeed or (in the trucking industry) TruckersReport.com. It’s a good idea to check these websites regularly to look for driver feedback. Not only does it allow you to address issues as they arise, but it gives you a pulse on the morale of your workforce – and whether any issues are brought up repeatedly.
- Anonymous surveys. Anonymity is very important during the survey process, which is why some companies opt to use a third-party provider to gather information from their current drivers. Most employees – especially in the early months of their tenure with your company – will be hesitant to give critical feedback publicly. Rather than keeping this information bottled up until they ultimately leave, an anonymous survey can help uncover issues as they arise so that you can keep drivers in the cab longer.
Whether they’re afraid of jeopardizing their employment, or simply looking bad, the information you get from your current employees doesn’t typically represent the full picture. By gathering and evaluating post-hire data using the above sources, however, you’ll get better insight into the core issues that are impacting your morale and retention rates.
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