How to Improve Employee Engagement

Improving Employee Engagement with Online Communication and Training

Jay Winegardner, CEO of Truck One, joined us to share his best tips on how to use the Infinit-I Workforce system for more effective employee engagement and communication. This includes creating custom content to personalize communications.

Winegardner has used the Infinit-I system since 2013 to improve his growing fleet, and he shares how easy this is to implement for the trucking industry.

Get to Know Truck One

Truck One began as B&L Motor Freight more than 70 years ago. Although the name has changed, the company continues to operate as a full truck loader and regular route carrier. They have 50 support employees at their hub and a fleet that consists of close to 200 truck drivers.

Some of the drivers are employees, while the rest are owner-operators. Winegardner requires all to complete Infinit-I Workforce System training. Many of the drivers have embraced the system, finding the training useful with good information.

Why Use Online Training?

Before implementing Infinit-I Workforce online training, Truck One held an annual in-person safety meeting. While attendance was mandatory, 25% of drivers would not be able to attend.

They tried incentivizing attendance with a dinner and door prizes, but the nature of the work made it difficult to meet 100% attendance. On top of poorly attended training, they were using paper communications that slowed down the process of informing the fleet on important communications.

Understanding that this was leading to poor employee engagement, Truck One decided to move to online training. This decision was reached for three reasons:

• They were a growing organization that needed a better way to present a cohesive message to all employees.
• They understood the need to implement custom content in their training program.
• They needed an easy way to provide training to deal with incidents.

They took time to prepare the company for the rollout by ensuring they had all needed contact information to get everyone access to training. The Operations Safety Management team went through the training for themselves to make sure they understood the system and sent reminders to employees about the start date.

Winegardner also took the time to make sure employees understood why they were making the change and how it would help everyone. He produced a CEO message to share information about the system.

Through these preparations and a willingness to work with wary drivers on how to use their devices to access the training, Truck One made a smooth transition with little pushback. They were able to show how easy the training was to access, so the adoption rate among older drivers was not an issue either.

How the Infinit-I System has Improved Employee Engagement

Truck One has found that the Infinit-I system helped with employee engagement in many ways. Since everything is online, employees have access to an expansive library of videos. This reduces the need to pull personnel from other tasks to set up training for new hire onboarding and annual safety meetings.

Those employees who were pulled from other jobs to complete these things are now able to spend time improving their specific areas of responsibility while still having more time to complete those roles. Drivers still have access to important training, but they are able to complete that training in less time so they can stay productive on the road while ensuring everyone is able to join in the training.

Orientation

Online training has allowed them to complete pre-orientation training in less time while still providing necessary info. Winegardner said the online system has allowed him to tell which new drivers are serious about joining their team.

“They complete the work in no time.”

The safety management team has access to orientation templates that help them build out the orientation program. They also have an easy way to upload custom videos when needed to provide updates on national regulations.

Corrective Action Training

The Infinit-I online training management system makes it simple to assign corrective action training immediately to address concerns. After incidents, drivers receive an email to complete specific modules dealing with the incident.

The drivers have learned to expect the corrective action training based on communications from the safety management team. They understand they have a week to complete the training if they want to remain in good standing.

ELD Mandate

When the mandate for electronic logging devices came up, Truck One was able to prepare drivers for the rollout through training series from the manufacturer. API integration made it possible to upload this training to the Infinit-I system so it was easily accessible by all employees, current and new hires.

Monthly CEO Messages

While the ease of training access is great, where Winegardner excels with the Infinit-I system is his monthly CEO messages. Each month he prepares a message to share important information with all employees. He keeps the video to under five minutes so it’s easy for team members to watch, and his message includes:

• A welcome to new employees
• A summary of the videos for the month and why they are important
• Company updates and announcements
• Communications from the support team
• Encouragement for everyone to stay safe

He makes sure to include plenty of gratitude and encouragement as he believes this is the hallmark of good leadership.

Further Advice on Using the Infinit-I System

Winegardner wrapped his message up with some last words of wisdom on implementing the Infinit-I system to train fleets.

• Stick with it. The transition to online training is worthwhile.
• Make sure you learn the system yourself to prepare for rollout.
• Be diligent in implementing the program.
• Make the training achievable. With custom content, keep videos short to keep driver attention.

Why does he encourage organizations to use the Infinit-I system to increase employee engagement? The system documents all completed training and tests, so the information is readily available at need.

The team also uses the system reporting and incident reports to select priority training to deal with safety issues immediately. In this way, Truck One has seen improvements in their CSA scores.

Transitioning to Online Training and Communication

If you are still trying to complete safety training through in-person meetings, you likely understand how difficult it is to get everyone to attend. If you’re ready to increase employee engagement and productivity, online training with Infinit-I Workforce Solutions has the tools you need to make this happen.

To learn how the Infinit-I Workforce System for Trucking can improve employee engagement for your fleet, request a demo here.