Opinion: Matching Up to Top Performers
B>By Bruce Branch
As much as 75% of driver turnover could be avoided with the use of a personal assessment tool to match applicants with jobs. An assessment tool attempts to identify a person’s thinking process, behavioral traits and occupational interests. With this tool we have the ability to seek out drivers who have the traits that most closely match the company’s top-performing drivers. With this information, we also can identify where additional training and management attention can help other candidates improve their performance and become successful drivers.
We have put technology to work for us through the use of satellite-based tracking systems and route-optimization software to help improve the ability to get drivers home regularly. Now it’s time to put science to work for us when it comes to choosing our most important assets, our people. Recruiters can scientifically measure the potential of all drivers and predict their performance before they get behind the wheel. Recruiters can assess the likelihood for success of all driver applicants before the company invests time and money in them.
When personal assessment tools are utilized, as many as three-fourths of the drivers selected will be successful, competent and productive long-term employees.
Once we have the ability to hire drivers who have the potential to do as well as our top-performing drivers, we can shift the focus to doing what is necessary to retain them.
Personal assessments give dispatchers and fleet managers the information they need to more effectively communicate with each driver as an individual. The only way you can treat drivers as individuals is to know them as individuals. The retention war will only be won when we know our drivers better than they know themselves. We need to make sure that the driver’s windshield time is spent with positive thoughts about the company.
Not only would personal assessments help win the driver turnover and retention war, but they also can help in the area of security.
Never before have managers been more concerned about who they put behind the wheels of their trucks, especially when hauling hazardous materials.
Personal assessment tools can be used to measure a driver’s integrity. Put another way, can the driver be trusted? Is the driver honest? Is the driver likely to abandon your truck and trailer and your customer’s product on the side of the road without warning?
The reliability of the driver also can be measured, helping managers address the question whether the driver is dependable. Is the driver going to be on time?
Assessments can also measure the work ethic of the driver, indicating whether he or she is likely to be a long-term, hard-working employee. With the use of assessments you can even measure the driver’s attitude toward substance abuse.
For those trucking companies that are already using some form of pre- or post-hiring assessment tool, it is important to know if the assessment is valid and reliable.
Validity addresses the question: “What does this really measure, and how well does it measure what it was designed for?” Reliability refers to the consistency of assessment scores posted by the same person when re-assessed on different occasions.
The Department of Labor has established guidelines for both of these measurements. You should make sure your assessment meets both of these standards.
As managers, we are all looking for ways to increase our companies’ security and profitability. Personal assessments can help us identify those who have the critical traits to be the kinds of drivers we want and need.
The writer is an attorney and a specialist in personnel turnover and retention in Little Rock, Ark.
This story appeared in the April 8 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.
