How to Prevent Administrative Mistakes from Impacting Drivers

In the first part of this two-part series, we looked at some of the ways carriers unnecessarily move administrative responsibilities down onto the driver—including issues around maintenance and mentoring. We also looked at how the Best Fleets are able to avoid these problems.

A quick recap: The issues we’re talking about include any business-side situation creating an add-on problem that the driver is left to solve.

For example, you pull a vehicle in for preventive maintenance (business-side), but then the driver is left with no vehicle and has to wait—which means they are not getting paid (driver-side).

Maintenance isn’t the only area of the business where this can happen, but it clearly can be a sore spot for drivers.

Companies aren’t doing this on purpose—they don’t always realize a decision in one area is having an impact somewhere else. It’s like a Jenga tower—if you’re not paying careful attention, you can move a block jutting out from the side without realizing that you’re upsetting the weight distribution in another part…and then it all comes tumbling down.

It Comes Back to Bite You

Why would taking care of driver-side issues make your business run better? When your decisions have a negative effect on drivers, they will cause problems on the business side—retention, customer relations, and overall productivity. You can probably guess why:

Turnover increases when a driver’s job gets harder or more unpleasant

Unhappy drivers mean less-than-stellar customer relations during a pickup or delivery

Wasted time dealing with extra problems means you’re not getting maximum driver performance

Each of these issues has the opportunity to crater your bottom line, so finding a solution isn’t just about making things better for your drivers for their sake—it’s also in the interest of the overall health of the business.

Take it from the Best Fleets

When fleets that make it into the Best Fleets Top 20 or Hall of Fame want to look at how a decision on the business side is going to affect the driver side, they’re really asking if moving a block in one part of the Jenga tower is going to upset the balance somewhere else. And the way they do it is simply by asking. In fact, they’ve developed multiple sets of eyes at various levels of their companies—Driver Advisory Boards or Councils (DAB or DAC), committees, and sub-committees that include the voices of drivers directly.

In fact, while 72% of all the companies that participated in the Best Fleets program this year had some kind of DAB, when you look at just the Top 20 and Hall of Fame winners, that number moves to 100%. The vast majority have multiple committees giving feedback in all sorts of places, from driver-specific insights on programs and policies, to truck specs and tech, to charitable and community work, and more.

Driver Feedback is a Method that Works, and Here’s Why

Driver insights and feedback help prevent decisions with unintended consequences at the point of delivery. By instituting a cycle of review, feedback and communication, you’ve got people to tell you right away how moving the block in one area is going to affect other parts of the business, especially on the road and at a customer location. (As a side benefit, utilizing committees and advisory boards helps drivers feel heard and more engaged with your fleet.)

And what the Best Fleets have discovered is that your business runs better when you develop a culture that not only invites but capitalizes on what their drivers are seeing and telling you (before the tower ever starts to get wobbly).

An Extra Benefit

Adopting a DAB or other driver feedback mechanism will change the culture of your company, and that’s a great thing. Culture isn’t a fixed object, and it’s important to be able to evolve in the face of changing times.

It may not be easy to make a change like this if you don’t have a driver feedback mechanism in place already. But without it, your business may be suffering from a structural set of issues affecting both your drivers and your bottom line, and a structural problem requires a structural solution.

But happily, driver feedback has already been test-driven by the Best Fleets, so the question is less about whether it can work and more about how to make it work for you.