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Tracking the trends<br />
Retaining Training<br />
Make sure your team takes<br />
skills, information from the<br />
classroom to the highway<br />
By Dwain Hebda<br />
If it feels like your company’s driver training and other educational<br />
programs are falling on deaf ears when participants leave the<br />
classroom and return to the road, it might not be a case of poor<br />
attitude or an inability to learn on the part of the trainees.<br />
According to training experts, many companies go to great<br />
lengths to educate their employees — only to overlook one critical<br />
part of the process: consistent follow-up.<br />
“You never want to stop educating. You want to have recurrent<br />
education. Communication is huge, and it differs with different<br />
segments of industry,” said Mike Brust, director of safety and loss<br />
prevention for the Arkansas Trucking Association.<br />
“The less-than-truckload side is going to see the drivers faceto-face<br />
quite a bit and you can easily schedule meetings and impart<br />
information,” he explained. “For a truckload carrier, you often<br />
don’t see those drivers for months. In that situation, you have to<br />
discuss things — pat them on the back, let them know they’re<br />
not forgotten, that they’re part of the team. That’s extremely<br />
important.”<br />
Technology offers a great assist<br />
in this process, limited only<br />
by the creativity and imagination<br />
of the training team, Brust<br />
said.<br />
“One item that I’ve seen to<br />
be very successful is the use<br />
of video,” he said. “Use a<br />
phone to video record drivers<br />
performing a job properly,<br />
such as pre- and posttrip<br />
inspections, proper<br />
three points of contact<br />
getting into and out of<br />
a tractor, proper lifting,<br />
proper backing, etc.<br />
“Employees like to see<br />
one of their co-workers<br />
in the videos; I have<br />
used this in the past<br />
with great success,”<br />
he added.<br />
16 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA MAY/JUNE 2024