Choosing the right drivers for your company and ensuring that they are competently trained is a critical component for any fleet.
However, this component can also be among the most costly of expenditures. There's a delicate balance required to both attract and retain skilled drivers while keeping costs low at the same time.
The following is a quick look at how you can reduce your hiring and training costs for drivers without sacrificing too much by way of safety and skills.
How much does it cost to put a new driver in a company truck?
The first component to look at is employee turnover. It isn't unusual for a company's greatest uncontrolled expense to be directly related to high employee turnover. This is due to employee turnover having three well-documented cost elements:
- Staffing costs. This includes all costs associated with recruiting new job applicants, including advertisements, screening new applicants, medical screening, drug and alcohol testing, etc.
- Vacancy costs. Until a position can be filled, that vacancy drops down a company's overall productivity, which leads to lost revenue possibilities and/or overtime costs as current drivers attempt to cover.
- Training costs. Once a driver has been chosen to fill the vacancy, there is another period of costs related to training. There is the time it will take your current employees to inform and train the replacement driver, as well as the resources related to training, such as workbooks, documentation, and more.
How do I bring these costs down?
1. The first obvious step in reducing these costs is to eliminate the need to hire and train new drivers altogether by lowering your turnover rate. One of the leading reasons people leave any company is due to their feeling stuck or unaccomplished in their position.
Fleet managers can help mitigate these emotions in two key ways:
- First, ensure there's plenty of positive and focused feedback for drivers. Put in place public recognition incentives for those who achieve established milestones.
- The second way is to provide career advancement for your best drivers. Giving drivers a position to aspire to will give them motivation to stay with your company (which reduces turnover rates). Potential advancement opportunities include more authority and responsibilities within the fleet, movement into an office, or even the owning of their own unit.
2. When hiring for a vacancy is unavoidable, the next way to reduce expenses is to create a blended learning program. Blended learning is programming that combines job shadowing, instructor-led training, and online training. This mix enables companies to achieve the greatest advantages of each type of training while also keeping costs down. It focuses on training the company's own employees from the ground-up (instead of hiring from unknown programs). Curriculum costs are kept down through the integration of a cohesive (and cost-effective) eLearning program.
In Summary
No matter what the economic climate, it's important for companies to make smart choices that will reduce ongoing costs and increase effectiveness. Keeping your employee turnover rates low and improving your training curriculum can drive down expenses. It's important to note that no company should strive to eliminate all types of training. In the long-term, removing training will only reduce the effectiveness of your drivers and contribute to high employee turnover. Instead, enact a blended learning curriculum for cost-effective training and incentives for happy, long-term drivers.
Contact us for more information about how to stay competitive in this industry and how curtainsiders can help improve the cost-effectiveness of your fleet.
