Max Farrell, CEO of real-time feedback platform WorkHound, joined Jeremy Reymer on this week’s episode of Taking the Hire Road to discuss the value of driver feedback, the creation of an effective feedback loop and trends in the current economic climate.
Retention is a hot topic, especially in this challenging freight environment. How are companies leveraging the kind of feedback that WorkHound provides?
During freight recessions like the current one, Farrell said, rightsizing is more prevalent than pure retention. “Right now, you don’t hear much about companies growing their fleet. It’s about optimizing their business and holding on to the right people.”
According to Farrell, the companies that make the best use of employee feedback are those that don’t merely try to retain drivers, but also proactively lay the groundwork to optimize their business, improve efficiency, ensure drivers are safer and learn how to appeal to customers.
Using feedback for more than retention
“Our goal is to give the workers a voice and give companies the tools to build a better workplace,” Farrell said. He offered some tips for fully leveraging employee feedback to optimize the operation.
Driver efficiency: Are driver managers empowered to make drivers efficient? What training will help staff maximize miles per truck per day?
Customer insights: Listen to what drivers say about working with shippers to gain an edge with potential customers.
Labor laws and employee relations: Due to recent rule changes by the National Labor Relations Board, it is now easier for unions to form. Many companies want to keep a direct relationship with their employees, and so they’re using feedback to understand crucial issues and prioritize the locations and departments that are most at risk.
How to create a feedback loop
Soliciting and receiving feedback is just one part of the equation, because employees will expect action as a result of that feedback.
According to Farrell, the most critical components of a feedback loop are understanding the data, being able to tell the story of what that data says and then knowing how to make the business better as a result.
“Capturing feedback is vital at the grassroots level in an industry like trucking, where the straw can break the camel’s back,” Farrell said.
Where companies find the best success is when they can identify micro issues that lead to a macro change. The most effective leaders look at what their people say, not just the numbers.
Habits to reinforce the feedback loop:
- Identify dashboard managers who engage with feedback. One of WorkHound’s unique features is being able to engage with every piece of feedback through systems like two-way anonymous chat.
- Review feedback regularly. WorkHound streamlines this with weekly email summaries.
- Dedicate regular meeting time to discussing feedback and solutions.
- Demonstrate accountability by regularly communicating that issues are being addressed.
Farrell says it’s incredibly valuable to make sure employees know their feedback isn’t falling on deaf ears.
All of this tends to improve driver/employee satisfaction.
Improving scores vs. improving companies
Leaders tend to want the highest score possible, but gaming that number may mean an incomplete accounting of the business.
Having an accurate baseline for employee satisfaction and working realistically from there can help determine when there are issues or improvements, according to Farrell. Measuring changes against the baseline is much more useful than perpetually pushing to inflate scores, which can drive unwanted behavior with unintended consequences.
Merely improving a satisfaction score without making substantive change accomplishes nothing but feeling good or trying to look good, whether internally or externally.
“It can be a vanity metric,” Farrell said.
Feedback is not useful without a philosophy of honest insight and improvement.
“What are the core things that make our business better? What gets measured is what gets managed,” Farrell said.
Current trends in truck driver feedback
One of the most important tools for utilizing feedback is looking at aggregate data to map the latest trends, especially when it comes to driver perspective versus manager perspective.
In 2023, these are the themes that WorkHound is seeing most frequently in North America:
- People.
- Logistics.
- Equipment.
- Compensation.
- Praise.
“During the tough times, this is still a people business. It’s easy to focus on spreadsheets and numbers, but the revenue center of this industry is people,” Farrell said.
Listening to people and improving is essential, because the best-performing, most engaged employees will be the ones who give the organization an advantage as the market shifts.
Click here to learn more about WorkHound.
Book recommendation: “Children of Memory”
Sponsors: The National Transportation Institute, Career Now Brands, Carrier Intelligence, Infinit-I Workforce Solutions, WorkHound, Asurint, Transportation Marketing Group, Seiza, Drive My Way, F|Staff, Trucksafe Consulting, Seated Social