For any business, accountability is one of the most important attributes for cultivating operational success. When it comes to developing truck drivers, this is especially true, because their performance impacts the safety of all who travel our nation’s roads.
To improve operational productivity and safe driving, fleets must understand the importance of accountability and how to cultivate it in their development and training processes. So why is it important? And how can they build it?
Why Accountability is Important
When training drivers, accountability means making sure that each task, training video, phone call, ride along, or meeting isn’t just completed, but is effective. Ensuring that a professional development plan (PDP) is faithfully carried out is absolutely essential to reducing risk and liability, as well as improving operational performance.
If a driver has been identified as needing training, but the fleet fails to train them thoroughly, then they aren’t actually improving the driver’s safety and expose themselves to increased liability in the case of a crash, a true breeding ground for Nuclear Verdicts. Additionally, the fleet has missed an opportunity to improve the driver’s individual productivity and performance.
How to Build Accountability in Your Development & Training Processes
When it comes to training, building accountability doesn’t just mean monitoring your drivers; you have to hold your managers accountable too. To do this, fleets need to create visibility into their development and training processes. Doing so can help fleets:
- Track their training plans’ “exceptions”
An “exception” occurs when a task, meeting, or assignment in a driver’s PDP is not delivered to them on a timely basis. Addressing trainers who aren’t effectively completing all of their tasks is an easy place to start making quick improvements. Ensuring that these interactions are timely, targeted, and relevant is crucial to gaining driver buy-in.
- Identify which managers are effectively developing their workforce
Even if all of a plan’s tasks are administered, fleets will find that some managers’ drivers perform worse than other managers’ drivers. This can indicate that the manager needs to change how they conduct calls or administer material, which leadership can work to help them improve.
Unfortunately, for many fleets, tracking this information at a high level isn’t easy with the tools they have on hand.
The Tool You Need to Build Accountability
While it may seem difficult to create visibility into your fleet’s training process, there are tools that can help.
The Idelic Safety Suite® is the industry’s leading driver management platform, which consolidates all fleet data into a single command center and analyzes that data using AI-powered models built on 20+ years of rich data from hundreds of thousands of drivers.
As the most comprehensive driver management platform in the industry, Safety Suite helps leadership gain full insight into their training data and their drivers’ on-the-road performance, giving them the visibility they need to hold trainers and drivers accountable.
If you’d like to learn more about how Safety Suite can help build accountability in your training, watch a 2-minute demo or sign up for a deep-dive here.