As technology continues to improve — particularly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — more companies across all industries are embracing technological solutions to streamline their internal and external processes.
A recent study by McKinsey and Co. shows that companies have “accelerated the digitization of their customer and supply-chain interactions and of their internal operations by three to four years”.
With many companies adopting more advanced solutions, holdouts will likely be left behind. Tech-resistant companies can expect to experience hardship when competing with the speed and efficiency of their more advanced peers, as these companies could struggle to keep up with competition and see a decrease in employee morale.
Rather than replace humans, many organizations are utilizing cutting-edge approaches to lighten or even remove the burden of repetitive, time-consuming, and monotonous tasks. Not only does this free up their workforce, but it also improves accuracy and efficiency.
Some of the most laborious tasks in any industry involve employee recruitment and retention.
DriverReach, a modern recruitment and retention platform, helps trucking companies streamline and automate tasks like paperwork, applications, and driver job listings. This technology is specifically designed for those who specialize in recruiting, safety, and operations.
“We are there to assist the carriers with better management around those [HR recruiting and retention] processes and to help them make it more efficient for all users in the organization,” said Wendy Bartz, vice president of customer experience at DriverReach.
In a highly regulated industry like transportation, technology is becoming increasingly paramount. DriverReach prides itself on providing a way for recruiters to focus on building relationships with drivers and helping them move through the hiring process easily and efficiently.
“There’s a massive deficiency in trucking technology pertaining to HR recruiting,” said Jeremy Reymer, founder and CEO of DriverReach. “Our focus is to help companies hire drivers faster and more efficiently and improve that overall process.”
Despite the benefits, some companies are still hesitant to make the change to more tech-savvy solutions. Many argue that the more manual process they use still works, while others are hesitant to make any sort of change.
Coming from processes that involve extensive use of spreadsheets and paper documents, Tyler Perrett, director of recruitment at Delta Industries Inc., has seen firsthand the drastic improvement that results from modern recruitment technology like DriverReach.
“All of this information was being manually entered by me into different systems,” said Perrett. “Running things like motor vehicle records and criminal background checks was all me going in and manually typing in all of that information in three different locations. Everything was literally by hand.”
Delta Industries was initially fearful about taking a step in the direction of advanced technology. However, since making the switch to DriverReach, Perrett is spending more time developing relationships with new drivers and less time manually posting job listings and filling out paperwork. He said there has also been a decrease in minor errors across the board and increase in morale among all those involved in the recruitment process.
“[This technology] has literally cut my time in half, if not more than that,” Perrett said. “Everything is online now, and drivers can do everything from their cell phone, which is much more user-friendly.”
Additionally, some companies have stepped away from the manual recruiting process but have struggled to find the right technological solutions to fit their specific processes. Josh Mecca, director of recruitment for American Central Transport, came to DriverReach from a competing technology provider whose biggest error was ineffective communication during the onboarding and orientation processes.
“When our candidates were moving through our process, they weren’t receiving our [company’s] message and direction, and there were a lot of mixed messages regarding what was expected of the new drivers, which was creating confusion for everyone,” Mecca said.
Still, American Central Transport was afraid to make changes for fear of upsetting a process it had been using for nearly 10 years. When it did embrace change, however, processes like orientation and applications began to move more quickly and efficiently.
“Our biggest competitor is the status quo — doing what you’ve been doing. The key is to help people understand the importance of assessing where they are, what’s missing and where they could be if they leveraged technology. That could be what closes that gap,” Reymer said. “If that’s the case, many will see that it is well worth the expense.”