How to Give Your Driver Retention Department a Boost

Their job is to be the last line of defense against the costliest component of modern trucking: turnover.

Your driver retention department, often the unsung hero of the trucking world, goes through a lot to ensure truckers stay in the seat.

How can you help them do their job? Here are five easy ways.

Treat Them Well

Driver retention can be an incredibly thankless job. Many times, no one notices when things are going right for the driver retention department, just when things are going wrong.

They’re doing everything in their power to keep drivers on your team—meeting with them, counseling them and more. And when drivers leave anyway, it can be disheartening.

That’s why your in-house driver retention department needs some pampering. Keep them motivated, encourage them to do their best and be forgiving when things don’t quite pan out their way.

Open-Door Policy

Many companies think installing an open-door policy is all the help their retention department needs.

When drivers know that their boss’ door is always open, they’ll just stop by and make their concerns heard, right? Not quite. Your drivers are out on the road for days at a time, and the chances they’ll be back at headquarters right when you are is slim to none.

Help your retention department go beyond the open-door policy by encouraging feedback from drivers while out on the road. When your driver retention department knows what’s going on immediately, not days or weeks later, they can address concerns and do their job more easily.

Focus on the Message

Let’s say one of your drivers approaches a member of your driver retention department to break the news: he found another job with a different company.

“Why should I stay here?” the driver asks.

If you and your driver retention team can’t articulate a good answer to that question, you’re in for trouble. Help your driver retention department out by knowing what makes your company different and worthwhile, and how to communicate that to the right demographic of drivers you’re hoping to attract and retain.

Give Them the Tools to Help Drivers

Recruitment and retention are two sides of the same coin. And it’s no secret that the best recruiters you have are the drivers already on your team.

Many companies encourage their drivers to recruit quality personnel. But they can only really do this if they can effectively convey the perks of working with your company.

Offer marketing collateral designed for drivers to offer to interested people and include the contact information of your retention department. This way, there’s a steady stream of new drivers being brought into the fold and your retention department sees happy, engaged drivers spreading the good news about your company. It’s a win-win.

Give Them Data

Driver retention departments don’t make corrective actions on hunches. To keep people on their team, they look at the facts—why people left, what people are complaining about and so on—and make adjustments.

It’s hard to know how to improve on something if there’s no quantifiable way of backing your claims up. A huge way of helping your driver retention department do its job is to collect real, actionable data about the problems that drivers are facing right now.

With a real-time feedback platform that lets your drivers share their concerns right when they have them—without waiting until they’re back at headquarters—your driver retention department knows precisely the best course of action to take.

Find out how WorkHound helped Southern Refrigerated Transport curb turnover, saving them thousands in the process. Download this incredible case study to learn all about it.