On this week’s episode of Taking the Hire Road, Lisa M. Battaglia, founder and president of Battaglia Communications, sat down with Jeremy Reymer, founder of DriverReach and Project 61, to discuss the importance of developing and executing an internal marketing and communications strategy to drive employee engagement, retention and safety.
In 2022, Battaglia founded her company because she saw a need for freight companies to shift their marketing and communication efforts from the outside to the inside. “I am a strong believer that communication is key for safety,” she said. “Safety has profound bottom-line results, more so than almost any other element of operation.”
Battaglia now works with transportation and trucking organizations around the country to develop and execute strategic marketing and communication plans that focus on employee engagement.
Her goals are to drive retention, promote safety and ultimately improve results. “These were all needs I saw having worked in the trucking industry for a long time,” Battaglia said.
Why is internal marketing so crucial? According to Battaglia, it comes down to meeting fundamental goals and keeping perspective.
“External marketing is of course necessary,” Battaglia said. “You’ll always need to communicate with clients and reach out to potential new clients.
“I think what’s missing is that the people who are driving that interaction with clients, people who are your producers, people who are responsible for safety, those are your employees, and good communication with those people has to come before external messaging can ever be successful.”
Battaglia often asks companies to think about who their most important clients are, and what it would mean to lose any of them. Then she asks what those same companies would do if they lost employees – which would be a much more devastating loss.
“The fact is, if you don’t have a good relationship and good communication with your employees, you can never have success with external clients,” Battaglia said. “So what are you doing to communicate with them and form a culture? What’s the message you put out there?”
According to Battaglia, safety is driven by behavior, and behavior in a corporate sense is driven by leadership setting an example and opening lines of communication with front-line employees, especially drivers.
“One safety failure – one catastrophic incident – can wipe out an entire company,” Battaglia said. “Not to mention the impact any incident has on employees and families.
“How are you communicating with front-line employees about safety policies and procedures with consistency, and have you made sure that your drivers understand the importance of safety?”
Attaching safety messages to an emotional hook and helping employees understand what it takes for everyone to go home safely to their families, according to Battaglia, is what’s most effective.
“We need to communicate the what, the why and the how,” Battaglia said. “What the expectations are from a procedural perspective, why it’s vital and how we can all work together to get that done.
“Once that line of communication is open and executives are talking with front-line employees, everyone can establish the most important goals top to bottom within an organization.”
The reason talking to drivers is so important, Battaglia says, is that all truck drivers on the road need to understand that not only their safety, but that of the whole motoring public is in their hands. “Innocent people are hurt every day on the road, and the trucking industry has a real responsibility to work together on best practices to ensure we all stay as safe as possible,” she said.
Book recommendation: “Leading People Safely”
Click here to learn more about Battaglia Communications.
Sponsors: DriverReach, The National Transportation Institute, Career Now Brands, Carrier Intelligence, Infinit-I Workforce Solutions, WorkHound, Asurint, Arya By Leoforce, Seiza, Drive My Way, F|Staff, Trucksafe Consulting, Seated Social, Repowr