Originally appeared in Fleet Owner
Finding and recruiting the right people for the right job is expensive.
According to an Indeed article, “most companies can expect to pay between $4,000 and $20,000 (obviously depending on the position) to hire a new employee, not including salary and benefits.”
These costs include job posting fees, background checks, testing services (if necessary), employee referral bonuses, employee onboarding, and job training. With these costs in mind, it’s obvious that keeping good employees should take precedence over finding new ones.
But here’s a frightening statistic: Gallup found that 51% of workers are open to leaving their current employer. The four most common reasons for leaving in 2023 were
- 41% – Engagement and company culture
- 28% – Well-being and work/life balance
- 16% – Pay and benefits
- 12% – Managers and leaders
- 3% – Other reasons
The importance of company culture and work/life balance have become major factors in retention ever since the pandemic threw the nation and the world into havoc. People began to reassess their priorities. Work/life balance is pretty self-explanatory, but company culture/engagement needs a bit more filling out.
Today’s employees, top to bottom, want to and need to feel acknowledged and appreciated. They need to know there are opportunities for training and advancement. At a NationaLease meeting, Adrian Chapman, founder and CEO of Cover 3 Consulting, discussed the six steps employees need to take to retain workers:
- Find out what motivates new workers before they start. Ensure that those motivations are aligned with the vision and mission of your organization.
- Connect upfront. Human resources should communicate with the workers to let them know who they’ll be working with before their first day on the job.
- Make senior leadership part of the welcome. Your new hire feel special and acknowledged.
- Pair the person with an existing employee. This turns into a mentor/mentee relationship, giving the new hire someone they can continue to communicate with and trust.
- Treat them well. This should be communicated to everyone, especially managers (as noted above, more than 10% indicated to Gallup that leaving or looking to leave was because of a bad manager).
- Acknowledge and celebrate success. It can mean a great deal when an employee is acknowledged publicly for doing an excellent job. It may be difficult to quantify that value, but workers who feel appreciated are more likely to stay. A 2023 Gartner study found that while “82% of employees say it’s important for an organization to see them as a person, not just an employee, only 45% of employees believe their organization actually sees them this way.”
How to retain diesel technicians
For those in our industry, the real challenge is in retaining diesel technicians.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the industry will need 28,500 new diesel technicians between now and 2031. A 2022 report from the TechForce Foundation, a nonprofit organization that champions students to and through their technical education, found that the industry had a ratio of 3.8 technicians in demand to every one technician available.
The six points listed above apply to technicians as much as everyone else. But in addition to those six and in a way related specifically to diesel technicians, energy giant Mobil recommends saving technicians a significant expense by paying for a new toolset and then offering ownership of the toolset after the technician has been with the company for a set amount of time.
Another important retention practice is to keep up to date on the latest technology and tools, giving technicians the necessary training opportunities.
As truck technology changes, the need for technicians who understand that technology will continue to grow. Since the average age of current technicians is 42 years old, retirements are a major concern for the industry. Recruiting younger technicians is essential; keeping them is even more important.
