Speakers:
Hayden Cardiff, Founder / Co-CEO, Idelic
Jeremy Reymer, Founder / CEO, DriverReach
Tim Smith, President, Pivotal Fleet Solutions
Ben Banks, Vice President, TCW
Last week, Idelic hosted the webinar, “Building a Culture of Retention: Onboarding and the Pre-Hire Process,” where our presenters discussed how fleets can revamp their onboarding and pre-hire processes to smooth their drivers’ transition to working behind the wheel and keep them around for the long haul.
At the end of the webinar, our presenters took questions from attendees on various topics, spanning from unreliable drivers to Amazon to technology. We’ve transcribed those questions and answered a few we didn’t get to below.
Have you investigated the use of behavioral or personality assessments during the pre-hire process to weed out job-hoppers before we hire them?
Ben Banks, Vice President, TCW:
“Great question! We do that for office employees, but not for drivers. The ones we use are very, very effective, but they are also very expensive. So yeah, I think there’s a benefit to using them with drivers, but we’ve not ourselves actually taken that dive yet.”
How do we combat the “Amazon Effect?” We can’t compete with seasonal compensation offerings. We tried to explain the seasonality involved, but it seems to fall on deaf ears.
Tim Smith, President, Pivotal Fleet Solutions:
“I understand the ‘Amazon Effect,’ but I’m going to revert it back to the ‘industry effect.’ Don’t give them a reason to look. Take good care of your employees. Take good care of your team… Instill confidence in the organization and build a pride level that doesn’t make them look.”
Jeremy Reymer, Founder / CEO, DriverReach:
“The people that are going to Amazon… especially if it’s final mile stuff are people that are looking for local work. That’s a reality. If you’re a long-haul carrier and have drivers who need or want to be local, you’re probably going to have to find other long haul drivers and be okay with that… There’s a lot of drivers that want to be home more often. It’s always been the case, but this year way more than normal. That’s a challenge that we all have to face, especially in a pandemic.”
Ben Banks, Vice President, TCW:
“We went through this a couple of years ago, and it was pretty dramatic… In the particular case we went through, we lost a substantial percentage of our fleet—probably 30-40%—to another motor carrier… Within six months, that motor carrier had dropped its volumes and was laying drivers off left and right. Those drivers came back knocking on our door, and it was a tough decision, but we made the decision not to bring them back on board. It’s not a threat; it’s just: If you’re going to weather the storm, you’re going to weather the good times and the bad times.
It goes back to the culture conversation. If they know we’re doing everything we can to take care of them and keep them moving, then they’re going to weather those times even if they can make another dollar or two down the road.”
How will Idelic and DriverReach help our fleet’s hiring culture?
Hayden Cardiff, Founder / Co-CEO, Idelic:
“First and foremost, being able to really help that data transfer from the pre-hire and post-hire platforms. Again, that’s a really strong tie into Jeremy and DriverReach as a wonderful partner of ours… we’re pulling all that data into the onboarding process and helping facilitate it.
So not only is the data coming in, but we’re also helping to facilitate the onboarding of that driver, making sure you as a hiring manager can see how we’re doing, who’s completing those tasks, who’s not. We also tie that into the safety aspect because once you get into the voluntary vs. involuntary side of things, involuntary turnover can make up a lot of your turnover—20-30% on average is what we’ve seen across the board.
That’s very quickly just a couple of the many things we do to help with your onboarding and pre-hire process.”
Jeremy Reymer, Founder / CEO, DriverReach:
“I’ll reiterate the technology part that Tim hit on: people, process, technology. We provide the technology to help you do that better. To be that empathetic, human, leading-cultural company that you need to be to make a difference. At the end of the day, we provide the technology to help you make a difference.”
Tim Smith, President, Pivotal Fleet Solutions:
“I think that’s kind of the crux of this webinar, you know? We have people in Ben’s standpoint, which is the viewpoint of people on the front lines… My role in this process is to help fleets enable the alignment of their technology, their processes, and their people. It’s Idelic and DriverReach that provide that technology that helps us automate and sustain and scale those processes and give that power back to the people.”
How can I use your technology to track a driver’s performance after I’ve onboarded them? I want to make sure my onboarding process worked.
Hayden Cardiff, Founder / Co-CEO, Idelic:
“Yeah, so the Idelic Safety Suite has a powerful feature called The Driver Watch List. Using all of your driver data, Safety Suite finds which drivers are at risk of a crash. It displays why they’re at risk, so you can see exactly what you need to train them on. That’s just one way the Driver Watch List can help you evaluate your drivers’ performance and spot any weaknesses in your onboarding.
I should also mention that because all your data is in one platform, you can really manage your drivers in a whole new way. It’s so much easier because instead of switching between spreadsheets and systems, you can look at a driver’s profile and say ‘Hey, I see his risk score is going up, why is that? Oh, he’s had some hard brakes recently? Let me assign him training and send him a message,’ all without ever leaving the platform. It makes every part of driver management easier.”
If you’d like to learn more about how Safety Suite helps fleets implement and scale the processes they need to retain drivers for the long haul, watch a 2-minute demo or sign up for a deep dive here.