Tackling Driver Turnover Part 4 – Communication – Or Social Needs

An old saying goes, and in the context of the corporate world, “Sometimes silence speaks louder than words.” If your company doesn’t have an effective, robust communication strategy, then I would guess that your retention numbers are suffering much from neglect. Humans are, by nature, social animals that need to interact transcends beyond family and friends. Beyond their private lives for drivers, it exists when they are on the road with fellow drivers and, of course, with the company they work for. Maintenance safety, admin, sales, and, of course, operations all play a role.

I have said for years that if you have two people in an office, you have a rumor mill, which is okay if you acknowledge it and fill it full of all the good things that happen in your company regularly. Rumor mills have a negative connotation because they are usually the starting point for gossip and unsubstantiated claims. So how do you stop this? Well, it’s easy. What you do is formalize a communication strategy, and then, like any other strategy, you work the plan by filling the information channels with all the good stuff, and if you look, there’s plenty of it to be had.

A couple of principles come into play for me on this subject. First, when I share information with you, I trust you and want your input. A company that does not communicate effectively is telling its people that they were hired to do a job, follow the role description, and nothing more, and they will fit in nicely here. The latter scenario is a problem if you are taking on your company’s retention issues; you will need all hands on deck, you will need volunteers for specific action teams, and you will require everyone to understand their role in driver retention, which transits their normal position. We need all our folks inside the walls to bring their ideas and input; we are no longer checking our brains at the door.

The second principle is who your audience is. A good retention strategy early on must identify whom they are communicating to. The obvious group is your drivers; after all, we are talking about driver retention. Here is the caveat if you remember back in the first article, we talked about values and how we would interact with all our relationships. When we talk about communications, it’s the same thing. I have had folks at some companies get stuck here; this is not an effort to retain drivers at all costs or to kowtow to them. You are in an exercise to become a value-driven company whose culture has a driver-centric cornerstone, which is a much different scenario.?

When I was in my position as President of a mid-size carrier, our audience was as follows, drivers, owner-operators and their families, our inside-the-wall people, our customers, suppliers, the local and national press, the communities we had terminals in, and governing bodies we interacted with. If you look at each of these sectors, they all influence driver turnover. Each of these sectors perceives your company in its reality. What are you doing to reflect your company in the best possible way to these folks? This might look like a complete drag on resources, and here’s the beautiful thing: in the long run, it isn’t, it will take some time to assemble a team to get going, and they will need to work together and meet weekly for an hour or so. However, a fantastic thing happens when folks start talking to each other; they begin to see the big picture, how they interact with each other, and how their actions affect someone else down the line. In the end, the minimal time spent in meetings over time is far outweighed by time saved in the efficiency that an effective communication strategy will bring.

We have so far set a firm foundation for the retention effort, and we know where we are in the marketplace with driver wages. We have rededicated ourselves to the safety initiative, paramount to our future success.

Now we have begun to make ourselves sticky from a driver’s perspective, let’s make them think about all they may be giving up if they consider moving to a new carrier. We're not where we want to be, but we're making progress. Suppose you believe, as I do, that humans are naturally social animals. In that case, you must think that this paradigm is supported by our relationships, marriages, home communities, and friends. We cling to these relationships and communities because they are where we are comfortable, fit us, and have a sense of belonging. We will defend those communities with everything we have.

By initiating a formal communication strategy, you are beginning to build that positive sense of community at your trucking company. Drivers will always be aware of what other companies are doing with wages and sign-on bonuses, and you can’t stop that. However, what you can do is begin to focus your efforts on disseminating all the positive things that your people do daily. I’m talking about employee promotions, driver and Owner-operator of the month, new grandchildren, new babies, clean inspections, highway heroics, new equipment coming into the fleet, driver profiles, and so on. Many positive things happen every day at your company that you can talk about and share.

In talking turnover, part five, we will discuss esteem needs or driver recognition.

Take Good Care and Safe Trucking

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