4 management tips to ensure you have happy drivers

Making sure you keep your employees happy in their roles is always an important step in any successful organization but, with drivers, it can be a very difficult thing to do. Working long hours, usually on their own, with very little human contact can be stressful and exhausting. And that's not to mention having to deal with the chaos of traffic and other drivers. If you're struggling to keep your drivers happy, the following are some top management tips that you can start to implement today.

Communication

Let's face it, there is nothing worse than not having the ability to talk about what's going on or being less-informed than your head of fleet. If you are approaching this from a multi-managerial standpoint then this means that not only does your operational leads need to be aware of what's going on, but this needs to have a trickle-down effect with your driving team leaders. While an operations manager will know vehicle telematics are being used to track driver performance, the specifics of that technology should be outlined to each driver. This communication should be two-way as well – if they are having issues because the routes are meaning less breaks, for example, due to stops not being as frequent, that needs to be communicated. Being comfortable to tell your boss that you aren't comfortable is as important as every other organizational structure in existence.

Opportunities for Advancement

You need to make your drivers feel valued and part of a team. Even if it's something as seemingly slight as being able to help with driving schedules or managing liaisons between the drivers and management, a number of sub-roles can be worked out within your team to ensure everyone feels like they are playing an important role in the success of the business. Equally, if some of your drivers are just looking to keep their head down and get on with the job, incentives for doing so can be quite important in keeping morale high across the board.

Benefits

This is always an important point – the benefits of working for a company usually far outweigh the negatives of working there. Pilots, for example, have a huge amount of responsibility, have to train for hundreds of hours before they can even be certified, and often have a start-stop lifestyle that means that planning anything beyond the next twelve hours can sometimes feel impossible. They are compensated with huge salaries, immense amounts of respect if they can keep their licenses and work with advancing planes, and they often have huge internal benefits that come with working for a specific company for a certain amount of time. Learn from other areas of your business and make sure that you are looking after the benefits of all your workers. The benefits that are the best fit will evolve as your business does. When you start your own business successfully ability to adapt to growth and change is what will sustain that success.

Public Recognition

Drivers are one of the most unseen workforces in the world. Delivery drivers, HGV drivers – all of them are so crucial to supply chains. By acknowledging the work of some of the best performers in your workforce, and it doesn't have to be more than a press release or a pay bump for someone who has been with the company X amount of time, you can let the public know just how much you value the work that your team is doing.