How much training is too much? That’s a question I never thought I’d be considering, but it turns out that there is such a thing as too much driver training.
With a business that sells driver training, I acknowledge that it seems odd for me to be saying that. But there is a point at which assigning too much training ultimately loses its effectiveness.
The “too much training” situation normally comes up when fleets are doing monthly training assignments for drivers. They assign some block of training every month, and drivers need to complete it by month’s end.
Assigning safety training for drivers every month without fail is counterproductive. It isn't an effective strategy for improving driver knowledge, fleet safety, or workplace culture.
Here’s why: You can’t just drop content onto people and be done with it. You need to take time to review what happens after that content goes out, adjust the plans, work on any lingering gaps, and get drivers involved.
To maximize the effectiveness of training, it’s important to watch the effect over time and make decisions based on those effects. Maybe the training worked beautifully and solved a problem, maybe it didn’t do much at all. If new things just keep getting assigned every month, there won’t be time to see if the training is actually working.
On top of that, not everyone develops at the same pace. There are some people who may love having something new to learn every month, but refreshing their memory of existing regulations and best practices isn’t really going to fit the bill for that. Other people need more time to assimilate new knowledge and skills, so bombarding them with monthly assignments robs them of that opportunity. Of course, with drivers having different experience and skill levels, it’s also unlikely that they’re all going to need exactly the same content every month.
Finally, if it’s something that happens every month, it becomes a chore. There’s no way that people are going to find every monthly assignment timely and valuable, so it will just become one more thing they “have to do” at work.
A better approach
So what should you do instead? How do you structure an ongoing safety improvement program that shows results, is more dynamic, and is still manageable to develop and deliver?
First, think of it in terms of a monthly activity instead of monthly training. Training is one of the elements, but there are other activities that can be incorporated to support that training that are just as effective.
Start with a quarterly cycle of monthly activities centered around a specific topic area:
- Month 1 – training assignment in the topic area (traditional online course, 20-30 minutes required to complete)
- Month 2 – survey collecting feedback from drivers on their work experiences related to the topic (e.g. real-world examples of it, stories from the road)
- Month 3 – create custom content related to the topic, such as a video reviewing the information covered in the training assignment or a recap of the feedback gathered from Month 2.
That’s just one example, but there are many variations available. There might be some live events in a particular month, or maybe someone finds a YouTube video that relates to the subject. Or drivers could be asked to post related pictures on Facebook for a contest. What matters is that the monthly activities incorporate content specific to the company, and that drivers have a chance to participate rather than just being told to complete something.
By combining those elements, a more engaging program is created, the workforce becomes more invested in it, and the content gets ingrained more deeply into the minds and work habits of the participants. You want training to “stick.”
By running it on a quarterly schedule, the pace of activities gives people time to think about the content and adjust their daily habits accordingly. There’s also more time to watch the results of those efforts in the field and adjust future plans as necessary.
Note that there’s still monthly engagement with drivers here. The practice of assigning new training every month may have stopped, but there’s still interaction with drivers and the topic of the quarter gets a deeper focus.
There’s also a better story when an audit or court case happens – not only is the fleet regularly training its drivers but it’s also involving them in that process more actively and evolving the program to respond to industry and workplace changes. And since a more engaged workforce is less likely to leave, turnover can improve as well, making the story even better.
Better engagement with drivers, better turnover numbers, and a better story for auditors - those are things you can't have too much of.
Mark Murrell is co-founder of CarriersEdge, a leading provider of online driver training for the trucking industry, and co-creator of Best Fleets to Drive For, an annual evaluation of the best workplaces in the North American trucking industry produced in partnership with the Truckload Carriers Association.
Autonomous trucks are coming.
And while no pundit or expert can be sure about when fully autonomous trucks will appear on the market, or predict how high the initial automation levels will be, you only have to follow the money to understand that a lot of cash-flush start-ups, as well as traditional truck OEMs with immensely deep pockets, are investing heavily in this new technology. And the stakes are high. The first companies to come to market with viable autonomous control systems for commercial vehicles will be at the vanguard of a completely new way of moving freight. And poised to make massive profits from it.
The numbers on the investments being made in autonomous truck technology is simply stunning. The Chinese-American start-up TuSimple, for example, made headlines last year when it achieved the much-vaunted “Unicorn” status on Wall Street — a term traders give to the extremely rare start-ups that are able to garner a $1 billion or more in outside investments. On a similar note, Daimler Trucks announced at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show that it was investing more than $500 million in its Autonomous Technology Group.
Meanwhile, Daimler’s arch-rival on the global commercial vehicle stage, Volvo Group, has scored some early successes with autonomous mining trucks and its ground-breaking Vera logistics tug — a battery electric-powered autonomous yard tractor that is already undergoing validation trials in Europe. Volvo also has teamed up with automotive technology developer Nvidia to develop autonomous control systems for regional- and long-haul commercial vehicles.
Navistar also has gotten in the autonomous game, announcing a partnership with the aforementioned TuSimple earlier this month to develop a series of long-haul Class 8 commercial vehicles, designed from the group up that will use TuSimple’s autonomous control technology.
And that’s just the money coming in from the development side of the technology equation. Potential end-users also are investing significant sums of money in order to boost research and have some input as to how these systems will function in real-world fleet applications.
Early adoptions will likely be in private depots, where autonomous yard spotters will have the ability to free the driver from the very tough jobs of backing into docks or parking trailers. I know, we live in a 41 foot 5th wheel camper and the toughest part of my logistics is backing into a campground spot. And cases where the following tractor trailer of a two-truck platoon might be driverless, or even limiting the self-driving miles to only exit to exit interstates. These remove many of the challenges of driving an autonomous truck for all its necessary tasks.
Cutting-edge technology and transportation companies like UPS, Fed Ex, and Amazon — to name just three high-profile examples — are also both investing heavily in autonomous technology and partnering with the companies developing it. And investments and partnerships like these are being formed all over the globe. Because the race to develop safe and efficient autonomous trucks is not merely confined to North America. Indeed, this is technology that is poised to revolutionize freight transportation around the entire globe.
That’s because autonomous commercial vehicles have shown tremendous promise for solving many of the problems fleets are facing. Tech developers say autonomous trucks have the potential to mitigate a diverse range of issues fleets are dealing with, including delivering consistently improved fuel economy compared to human drivers, easing traffic congestion, vastly increasing vehicle utilization, reducing maintenance costs, fully integrating with blockchain, digital freight apps and other transparent, real-time freight management systems all the way down to simply easing the decades-long driver shortage.
Because, at the end of the day, technology is merely using the latest developments to solve problems. And that, in a nutshell, is why such vast amounts of investment dollars are flowing toward autonomous truck innovators today.
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