A strong fleet culture—one centered on safety and operational excellence—is essential to long-term fleet success. After all, the individual people who work at a fleet will change each year, but their culture will determine their collective performance across time.
“Culture,” in the context of a company, is the set of behaviors and goals employees demonstrate, guided by the values they most regard. For example, if a fleet’s culture encourages retention, you could expect them to live by the key value of “engagement” and focus on reducing turnover.
When building a culture at your fleet, the first step is to identify the key values that will define it. Fortunately, there is one question leadership can ask themselves to determine which values they should prize:
“What does success look like for my fleet?”
Because culture affects employee behavior, and an organization’s key values ultimately determine its culture, your choice of key values has a direct impact on your fleet’s success.
Once you’ve determined your fleet’s success criteria, you can select key values that fit your success criteria. A few examples include:
- Success Criteria: Upholding your parent company’s brand image
- The Key Value for You: Company Pride
To live out this key value, your fleet should aim to encourage employees to represent the company brand proudly and respectfully. Here, your fleet could send drivers company jackets and encourage them to wear them when interacting with customers. Drivers might also receive time off to volunteer and represent the company positively in the community.
- Success Criteria: High levels of contract retention
- The Key Value for You: Customer Service
To live out this key value, your fleet can encourage employees to have positive interactions with customers and deliver on their promises. Here, drivers could receive incentives for positive customer feedback. As a 3PL, leadership might agree to only work with carriers that undergo a qualification process.
- Success Criteria: Safe, claim-free, on-time deliveries
- The Key Value for You: Timely and Safe Delivery
To live out this key value, your fleet may have Safety work together with Operations to ensure deliveries are timely yet safe. Here, drivers could receive incentive pay for achieving key safety goals. Leadership could set the expectation with customers that deliveries will always be on time, but safety will never come second to speed.
- Success Criteria: Reducing and eliminating accidents and injuries
- The Key Value for You: Continuous Development
To live out this key value, your fleet might employ targeted training to address driver risk and encourage even your safest drivers to brush up on their skills. Here, your fleet could invest in technology to identify your most at-risk drivers. Drivers might also receive incentives for attending yearly training that keeps them current with evolving best practices.
Track and Address Progress Toward Living Out Key Values
Once your fleet has identified the key values it wishes to exemplify, the next step is to track employee progress toward living out those values.
To do so effectively, your fleet needs to create visibility into employee behavior. Leadership can track the completion—or non-completion—of goals related to your key values. Then, reward the successful employees and discipline those who aren’t meeting your requirements through direct incentives or reprimands.
The Tool You Need to Track Goals and Build a Culture
While this may seem difficult to do across a fleet of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of employees, fortunately, there is technology that can help.
The Idelic Safety Suite® is the trucking industry’s most comprehensive driver management platform, which consolidates all of a fleet’s data into a single location and makes it easy to understand, ensuring leadership has the visibility they need to hold their employees accountable and track progress toward goals.
If you’d like to learn how Safety Suite can help your fleet build accountability and a stronger culture, watch a 2-minute demo or sign up for a deep dive here.