How Participating in Industry Peer Groups Can Benefit Your Company

When you’re embroiled in the day-to-day realities of work, it can be tempting to see yourself on a bit of an island. After all, the challenges your business is facing are unique, right? That is until joining industry peer groups.

While every trucking company faces unique and individual challenges, there are also many areas — particularly when it comes to hiring and retention — where there’s a good bit of overlap across the industry.

That means there are abundant opportunities for businesses to join together and collaborate to find constructive solutions to industry-wide issues. One way to do so is through industry peer groups, like those offered through the American Trucking Associations.

Why is this type of collaboration so important? Today we’re offering some perspective on the topic.

1. Collaboration Yields Forward Momentum
We’ve talked in past blogs about the perils of the “status quo” and how to take your business past it. The status quo can be just as dangerous in the trucking industry as a whole as it is for individual companies.

Working together and learning together, through industry peer groups and other organizations, helps keep the entire industry moving forward.

“If we’re not working together, we’re sitting still,” says Katie Love, Marketing Manager at WorkHound. “That’s how the status quo happens. Learning from each other helps to make the whole industry stronger. There is tremendous value in continually learning in this industry.”

2. Networking Moves the Needle on Hiring & Retention
Hiring and retention are areas of specific concern across the trucking industry. Traditionally — and still today — the industry has seen high rates of turnover, leaving companies struggling to find ways to enhance driver experience and boost retention.

Learning why and how drivers make the decision to leave a company is an important facet in helping to reverse that trend, both on an individual company level and industry-wide.

Tools like WorkHound garner invaluable insight into the wants and needs of drivers, particularly during the vital 90-day period when drivers are onboarding. That type of data and information can be used at a company level to help determine where things are falling through the cracks and what improvements can be made.

But there’s still room for collaborating through an industry peer group to examine what’s happening with hiring and retention on a broader scale.

“The biggest thing that peer groups offer is additional perspective,” Love says. “Talking with leaders from other organizations can help companies connect the dots on why turnover is happening. It goes back to why we ask for feedback in the first place — assumptions just do us no good.”

Talking about turnover trends with others in the trucking industry can yield potential solutions for companies who may otherwise feel like they are simply treading water.

3. There’s Strength in Numbers
Ever heard the phrase “A rising tide lifts all boats”? That’s precisely the case in solidifying a presence with industry peers. Companies that participate with industry groups become a part of the bigger picture, utilizing these partnerships to solve failures and affect positive change together.

“If we’re just seeing problems within our own company over and over again, it can feel overwhelming and our work can feel hopeless,” Love says. “Getting out and working with others within the industry can provide a boost and hope through a fresh perspective.”

Participating in industry peer groups? Get a finger on the pulse of your employees — and valuable information to share with other leaders — through WorkHound. Learn more about how we’re helping industry leaders.