Companies did better at recognizing their drivers in 2022 than in previous years.
That’s according to WorkHound’s Annual Trends Report that showed – for the first time ever – that praise was the leading category featuring significant positive feedback. The report, designed to help companies understand the industry from the drivers’ perspective and identify and address real-time issues before they become culture or retention problems, features positive and negative sentiment across 13 themes, including praise, people, equipment, communication, pay, logistics, uncategorized, miles, home time, training, safety, benefits and COVID-19. Of 32,600 anonymous drivers polled, 100% shared positive feedback in the praise category, which includes things like messages of gratitude.
“After discovering that praise was the number one theme, I talked to some other people on our team and went back and audited the results, and they stood true. It can be human nature to focus on the negatives while discounting the positives,” WorkHound Senior Customer Success Manager Jerome You said in a recent webinar that discussed data around driver job satisfaction and how to put it to good use. “Digging a little deeper and having conversations with some of these drivers – the source of this information – what we learned is that they weren't at all surprised by this. One driver told us it's basically about giving out what you want in return. Drivers are often very fair-minded, respectful people who are willing to praise the efforts in others because they want to be appreciated for their own contributions as well.”
In return, 42% of all feedback regarding the theme of people was positive, which You said ties into drivers being very willing to praise the people they work with – from driver managers to people in the shop working on their rigs.
Another standout statistic from the data that You found surprising was home time. The category had a higher positive percentage in 2022 compared to previous years at 31%.
That can be attributed to a benefits-plus strategy, said WorkHound CEO Max Farrell.
“We’re reaching a point within the industry, and really the modern workplace in North America, of where companies need to be offering benefits plus: health, dental, 401k. In this day and age, they're table stakes; people are expecting that the differentiating factor is going to be what else you bring to the table to help people be their full selves, not just in the walls of the workplace, but also outside of them,” Farrell said. “Looking at data like this, we can see that these benefits really do make a difference in the lives of drivers but also the staff, and those kinds of changes are the things that will drive both recruitment and retention.”
