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Cultural
Change
DE-
Efforts to reduce turnover must start at the top
and permeate every layer of management
By Cliff Abbott
How do some carriers achieve such low turnerover rates? It starts with
a plan, and that plan “starts with the acknowledgement that turnover is
man-made and not inevitable,” says past TCA Chairman and current TCA
Profitability Program (TPP) Retention Coach Ray Haight.
“One of the things that always gets me is when I attend a conference
where someone says, ‘this or that organization reports turnover at over 100%,
but we’re only at 80% so we’re doing good.’ My advice is, don’t worry about
the industry. What can you do?”
Haight doesn’t just talk trucking, he’s experienced it on many levels. He
knows the ins and outs of making a living on the road, having racked up more
than a million accident-free miles as a company driver and owner-operator.
In 1984, he started Southwestern Express in London, Ontario, growing the
company to 50 tractors before entering a 1990 partnership with Guelph,
Ontario-based MacKinnon Transport. The two companies were completely
merged in 2000, with Haight serving as president and COO.
Prior to the merger, he said, turnover at Southwestern was very low.
Nondriver staffing was minimal and everyone knew everyone else. After the
merger, the retention dynamic began to change. Turnover rose to 120% and
Haight knew something had to be done, and that meant a culture change.
That culture change resulted in turnover rates dropping by more than
83%, in addition to other benefits.
“The point is, we didn’t just reduce driver turnover from 120% to 20%
in two years,” Haight said, “we doubled operating margins. We drastically
improved our safety record. We impacted nearly every KPI that owners and
CEOs track to determine the success of their organizations.”
Those are the rewards Haight wants every carrier to realize.
“Do the math,” he said. “At 120% turnover, we were hiring 300 drivers a
year just to stay the same size. At a rate of about $6,000 per hire to recruit
and train each new driver, that’s $1.8 million that didn’t need to be spent.”
In his role as TPP retention coach, Haight teaches his retention program to
carriers all over North America, and he commands attention.
“It bothers me when companies delegate retention to a ‘retention coach’ or
‘retention manager,’” he said. “Solving the turnover problem requires a culture
change. That starts at the top and permeates every layer of management in
the organization.”
The people at the top, however, often aren’t the ones in attendance at
the retention programs he presents at TCA and at other events. “Who goes
to these things?” he asks. “It’s recruiting and safety managers. The ‘C-level’
people aren’t there.” That adds more steps to the solution, Haight said. “In
addition to learning the material, they have to go back and convince C-level
leaders to take the necessary steps.”
When Haight makes the presentation directly to a carrier, he’s adamant
about making sure the program will be supported from the top. “When I’m
asked to help out at a company I don’t even do these programs unless I can
talk to the owner or CEO,” he said. “Culture change isn’t possible without
C-level buy-in.”
A part of his reasoning comes down to trust, and he thinks some carriers
overestimate the trust drivers have in their leadership. Trust is related to
turnover, he said. “The higher your turnover rate, the less likely the team is to
believe what you’re saying.”
Haight’s retention program is based on a psychology theory first proposed
in 1943 by Abraham Maslow in “Psychological Review” and more fully fleshed
out in his 1954 book, “Motivation and Personality.” Maslow’s theory is that
the needs of an individual start with basic physiological needs and progress
through several stages, including safety, love/belonging, esteem and selfactualization.
The “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” diagram, a pyramid with the
most basic needs at the base and more complex needs near the top, is a staple
of many management classes.
Haight relates each level of the pyramid to the driver hiring experience. He
begins with a groundwork session, obtaining a commitment to change before
teaching how turnover is accurately measured and guiding participants
through a SWOT Analysis process. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities and Threats.
In each of the next six sessions, he zeroes in on each level of Maslow’s
hierarchy, discussing the carrier’s need for drivers and where they come
from, improvements in standard operating procedures and just do its, hiring
policies and performance management.
He discusses how to address the social needs of employees, including
establishment of a communication action team and a recruitment and
retention action team. Haight points out that there are more options for
communicating with drivers and their families than ever before, and points
to social media as a great tool.
“Carriers like Bison and Nussbaum have really figured out how to use
social media,” he said. “They use video so much, they even have bloopers and
outtakes from some of their videos that drivers find very entertaining.”
Communication comes in many forms, however, and isn’t always as
complicated as recording videos or handling social media platforms. “If your
trucks, terminals and offices look like they aren’t well cared for, it gives the
impression that your company is not well-run,” he said.
Communication also involves sharing information that isn’t necessarily
related to job tasks, such as industry news. Haight pointed out that any news
worth sharing around the office is worth sharing with drivers, too.
“It’s fairly arrogant that we get information on our desks that we study and
share with other managers and never think to share with our drivers,” he said.
36 TRUCKLOAD AUTHORITY | www.Truckload.org TCA 2019