Are you using your time efficiently once you have the drivers onsite for orientation? No offense, but not likely. Orientation can be a time to really connect with your drivers and form personal bonds. Instead, most fleets squander this valuable time with making drivers fill out mountains of paperwork.
Why not employ technology to do most of the legwork instead? Interactive driver portals are a great way to not only engage with drivers throughout the recruiting process, but they are a way to get drivers to fill out some of that paperwork before they even come onsite for orientation. Not to mention, when paperwork is done in a (good) interactive portal, it will be pre-populated with the necessary information, leaving the driver needing only to sign it.
This method not only gives you more opportunities to get to know the driver, rather than just his paperwork, it also allows them to get in the truck faster, making everyone money.
We have found that our clients save up to 50% of orientation time through efficiencies saved through this streamlined process. That’s time that they are now using to make those personal connections with their drivers, which leads to stronger retention. And the drivers get on the road faster, making everyone more money quicker.
I was in one orientation session with a fleet who I had just started training two days previously. I was really nervous for this first class of drivers because we hadn’t finalized everything, and frankly I had never been in the room before when drivers had just been introduced to my software. There were 12 drivers in the class and about half of them had completed all of the paperwork in the hotel room the night before. They were wondering what else they were going to do in orientation that day! The fleet was then able to spend some quality, face to face time with each driver to actually build relationships with them and really instill the company’s core culture and messaging in them before sending them out on the road.
Paperless DQ files will follow the driver throughout their lifecycle with you. In our software, the driver can login at any time to complete a form or just look at if anything is outstanding from his or her perspective. We have a symbol system that non-verbally communicates to the worker what status their file is at. Simply put, a red stop sign means STOP, you have something to do. And a green checkmark means it’s all done and approved by the fleet. This is a simple non-verbal communication to the driver that the file is being worked on and that it has been accepted by the fleet, instead of leaving them wondering. You would not believe how many technical support phone calls I get from drivers who are waiting for green checkmarks in their file and wondering how they can get those green checkmarks.
Though moving your onboarding into a digital format might seem like more effort than it’s worth, it is truly one of the easiest ways to get your drivers hired and, in the truck, faster.