Driver advisory boards. While many trucking companies have them, it remains absent in others. Yet, it’s one of the most effective ways to gain important insight into your workforce, which has become increasingly vital to retain as filling driver positions gets harder.
According to a recent report from Descartes, 76% of supply chain and logistics operations are experiencing notable workforce shortages with transportation being one of the most challenged industries. Only 25% of survey respondents said filling driver positions is “not hard.”
With that statistic in mind, it’s more important than ever to focus on retaining the drivers your company does have, especially considering the cost of onboarding new drivers.
At many of the industry conferences I’ve attended, I’ve heard fleet executives tout the use of driver surveys, but drivers’ responses fall flat if no one in a leadership role steps up and takes action on their drivers’ input. The same can be true of a driver advisory board if it’s just a matter of leadership hearing feedback from those members and, again, taking no action.
One of CCJ’s recently recognized innovators – Garner Trucking – has taken things a step farther by giving its board a budget to implement changes themselves. Those board members are tasked with regularly communicating among the company’s driver community to gather input, which is then executed upon – and the ideas don’t always cost money.
Angie Twardawa of Angie’s Transportation has a different avenue for feedback. During a panel discussion regarding recruiting and retention at the 2023 McLeod User Conference, she spoke about how her father – a former driver – is quick to provide constructive criticism from a driver’s perspective, though he is not an employee of the company.
That made me think it might not be a bad idea to recruit driver advisors from a different pool: your retirees. My grandmother and a group of other former Royal Trucking company drivers gather at a restaurant on an annual basis simply to catch up, though the group gets smaller as the years go by. Drivers keep in touch with each other and often with the leadership of their companies if the operation is on a smaller scale, which is the majority of trucking companies in the U.S. And with social media platforms like Facebook, it makes it even easier for them to connect.
Drivers are nothing if not opinionated, and most are very sociable considering they’ve spent much of their lives in solitary behind a wheel. Many of the retired ones would be happy to take part in an advisory meeting to give their thoughts, especially considering they don’t have a job to lose, and they have valuable tribal knowledge to back them up. Twardawa said her father keeps her in check.
Offer them a free lunch, and they’d probably jump at the chance to be part of your advisory board. That’s a cheap price to pay on a quarterly basis if it helps retain drivers. It also introduces current drivers to mentors, which is another key element in retaining drivers, Twardawa said.
Overall, if you don’t have a driver advisory board, form one. Make a plan that enables and encourages changes based on feedback. Give them a budget if you can afford it. And make sure it’s diverse with drivers from different generations, different genders, different races and veterans and rookies.
