How To Create a Successful Driver Training Program: Episode 6: Securing a Trainer

Securing a Trainer

We’ve now laid the foundation for a successful Driver Training Program: creating a comprehensive Position Description, a Training Outline, a Training Checklist, a Training Schedule, and Standard Operating Procedures. If you haven’t completed all of this, keep working on it. Driver turnover is not going to slow down until you can adequately train someone brand-new to the towing industry how to be an effective Driver.

You can design the most efficient, effective training system in the world. You can create the most comprehensive and easily followed procedures. You can even hire the safest and most proficient drivers available. Still, your Driver Training Program is not complete without a skilled, knowledgeable, and patient Trainer.

Where do you find this savior, the hard-working, wise, zen-like towing master, who can implement your vision selflessly on lower-then-management compensation? We don’t have an answer, except to state the obvious: when you do find them, keep thrm. Can you develop such a trainer? Probably not from scratch – you need someone with a good working knowledge of the equipment you are using, at a bare minimum. You need someone who can communicate well with both you and your trainees. You need someone who will buy in to your system (this is a BIG one) – if they don’t agree with how you want your drivers trained, or if they feign agreement and then do it their way, at the very least your sample is tainted, and you won’t know whether your system actually works. Worse, their way may create a lot of havoc and trauma, and you might think it’s your system that is faulty. And, above all, you need someone with the patience of the Dalai Lama.

The number one reason why employees do something the wrong way is also the number one reason why employees don’t want to do something at all – they don’t know the right way. There may be more than one way that is the right way. The important thing – for the trainer and the trainee – is that the right way is defined. You can always change the definition, if you determine that there is a better way than your current definition. But to create a system that is streamlined, efficient, and effective, you need the proper structure within which the moving pieces (trainer/trainee/equipment) operate. We’ve shown you the components of the structure in our previous articles.

If you are plugging an existing trainer into a new training program, or if you are hiring someone new, you will need to work together through the various steps of the program before you release him to work through it with an actual trainee. This may reveal weaknesses or contradictions in your program. If your trainer has helped you to create the program, it might be best for him to first take an existing driver through the program first. A fresh set of eyes and ears can see an obstacle that is in your blind spot.

Your trainer must have excellent organizational skills. He must be very comfortable with paperwork and documentation. He must be meticulous, methodical, and capable of great attention-to-detail, bordering on OCD. When you pull a new driver’s Training Checklist to see if he really was instructed on the proper recovery techniques, you want to be confident that the Checklist will be complete, legible, and hopefully mostly void of greasy fingerprints. They must not only know all procedures backward and forward, they must want to be the person who knows all procedures backward and forward better than anyone else.

Chances are that if you have a driver who really wants to be a trainer, or if you have an applicant who really believes they is the best person for that position, somewhere underlying the desire and confidence is a drive to control others. Allowed to grow on its own, this compulsion may lead to unwanted exertion of authority, or a superiority complex that turns others off. The focus on detail in documentation and process is where you want to channel that drive, so that the control is applied to information, data, and procedures, rather than to people.

Remember, if your trainer does not have the means, knowledge, or wherewithal to meet these requirements, it is your responsibility to train them, or to ensure that they receives training. One key to a successful business is the presence of effective systems that are subject to periodic review and revision. If you are having trouble with any particular work function in any particular department, the first place to look is your system. Do you have a system? Is the system providing the result you want? Training is the duplication of a system. If the system is faulty, the faultiness is duplicated. Most of the time there is a pattern problem in an organization, it is the system, not the people, that is the problem. If you’ve been blaming the people, there’s the number one reason for your high turnover.

Ideally, your training system is a long-term, ongoing process. No one, not even a veteran driver, is going to learn everything in a 2-, 4-, or 6-week program. You want your trainer to shepherd new drivers through the first several months, if not years, of their driving career. This is not always easy to do, and it’s not always easy to get them to do it, which is why it’s a good idea to create an incentive. One idea that seems to work well is to offer the trainer a cash bonus if a new driver makes it through the first six months with no at-fault damage or accident claims, and then again at a year. This not only gives the trainer a vested interest in the long-term success of the new driver, but now one more key person in your organization is working to stabilize your crew and reduce turnover. It’s interesting to see what a trainer can accomplish by just keeping an eye on recent trainees. They become more of a mentor than a supervisor or instructor.

Next Article: Performance Review Process