Drivers have long dreaded performance reviews — and who can blame them? Receiving nothing but criticism and notes about areas for improvement is not only stressful but also frustrating, especially when your good driving isn’t acknowledged.
Adam Kahn, chief business development officer of Netradyne, believes that a driver’s full performance, including both strengths and struggles, should be recognized equally. He appeared on FreightWaves’ WHAT THE TRUCK?!? to discuss how fleets can train their drivers with more positive feedback with Driver•i, the dashcam that monitors and trains drivers in real time.
“The last thing you want to hear after your trip is: ‘Let’s sit down and talk about these five things that you really didn’t perform well on,’” Kahn said, reasoning that that’s the typical approach because managers have not yet had the ability to extract positive information from driver events.
That is until Driver•i. Netradyne’s intuitive dashcam leverages AI and machine learning technology to transform visual data into performance metrics that fleets can use to reward good driving behavior and identify areas for improvement. It captures events both internal and external, allowing managers to get the full story on every risk-related event.
Kahn argues that drivers should receive feedback on their entire driver performance and not just the few instances when they might have messed up. Managers should address poor performance, but not without recognizing the majority of the time when the driver was doing exactly what they were supposed to.
“The industry has looked at those three to five minutes where the driver might have lost focus,” Kahn said. “Why not have a conversation for all 500 minutes?”
Kahn explained how one of Netradyne’s fleet customers in Phoenix starts every driver performance review with a positive attribute. It might include praising the driver for creating space after being cut off or other risk-mitigation efforts that you’d want your other drivers to follow.
This creates great opportunities for fleets to reward drivers for their performance with safe-driving leaderboards and subsequent prizes. Kahn suggests fleets celebrate their top performers in the hopes of encouraging a sense of healthy competition instead of just criticizing lower-tier performance.
He said that benign envy can be a powerful tool to improve fleet performance. Seeing the safest drivers receive perks and other rewards can challenge other drivers to improve their driving as well.
“I may think that I’m a better driver than you two, but you are the ones on stage,” Kahn said. “So my immediate reaction would be how do I become more like them? Because the boss sure seems to like what they’re doing and I want that recognition also. I want that type of connection with the company.”
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