The value of personal relationships with employees is great and can benefit you and your business a lot. By building a positive and stimulating work environment you will help in building the overall success of your organization.
This way, your workers will always be willing to go that extra mile in completing tasks, and not only completing them but doing an outstanding job too!
At the start it might look challenging to establish the balance between respect and likeability, but don’t worry you will get there!
You can start by:
- Actively listen to your truck drivers;
- Find a way to boost their motivation;
- Create opportunities for face-to-face communication;
- Refer to company culture to do a team building events;
- Be open about yourself in communication (you don’t have to tell them your deepest secrets but you can’t build meaningful relationships with them if you avoid showing yourself for who you are);
- Be friendly, but not friends (it’s ok to be open and honest, but don’t overdo it. You have to watch the fine line between the word friendly and the word buddies).
When you incentivize company truck drivers and have friendly relationships with them, you can mark only good things in your accomplishments calendar.
This is the key to add a touch of warmth to your business and motivate everyone to work hard towards achieving key business goals.
It’s definitely worth it to get yourself out there and start building your relationship with the truck drivers. After all they’re your most precious resource in reaching business objectives, plus when you incentivize company truck drivers, it won’t take a lot of effort to show them what their engagement means to you.
A great and open relationship with employees will help you to build a positive work environment, which engages and inspires the team, effectively helping the company reach its key business goals.
All you need to do is to develop meaningful relationships with your drivers. A great and open relationship with them will inspire them. You will end up building a positive work environment for yourself as well as your employees.
6. Don’t Forget About Their Birthdays and Work Anniversaries
If you want to incentivize company truck drivers, a good way to do that is by remembering their birthdays and work anniversaries.
Recognizing employee milestones is a great way to show your truck drivers that they are valued members of the team.
Birthday and anniversary celebrations can make them feel valued and in the same time it creates opportunities for staff to connect and get to know each other.
Buying the standard card and cake can feel a bit impersonal so you can try and make it a bit more personalized. Furthermore, you should ask your team whether they actually want their birthdays acknowledged or not.
The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), is working on the question whether or not employees want their birthdays acknowledged or not.
And don’t be surprised when some of them may not be comfortable with their birthday being publicly acknowledged. For them you should think of other way to mark the occasion, including:
- A day off (many trucking companies will offer as a birthday or anniversary gift an extra day off);
- Vouchers and gift cards;
- Celebrate monthly (If your company has a lot of company truck drivers that most of the time are out on the open road, plus on top of that other office stuff, then you can try to make a combined celebration at the end of the month for everyone who went up a number in age in the past 30 or so days or is having a work anniversary).
Quick note: When you decide to celebrate someone’s B-day, don’t specify the year. Use only the day and the month, not the year. This way you will avoid revealing someone’s age without his or her permission.
7. Implement Awards for the Spouses of your Truck Drivers
Directly or indirectly the truck driving life places a lot of demands on the truck driving spouse/ partner too.
I mean being a truck driver means balancing the life between highway and home, so it’s very appropriate to think about the other half of the drivers- their partner. You should acknowledge their sacrifices too, with some kind of employee rewards programs.
When you incentivize company truck drivers by rewarding their spouse too, your drivers will be more motivated to perform well.
It doesn’t have to be diamond jewelry for the ladies or the latest high-tech gadget for the gentlemen, but it sure have to be something nice. Now if your company can afford that kind of fancy gifts and rewards, why not?
Companies that give awards for spouses of the truck drivers, actually show that they appreciate the driver, but also their spouse.
Some companies find rewarding spouses as equally important as rewarding the truck drivers. And you know what? They are not far from the truth!
8. Years of Service Award
You can try to incentivize company truck drivers by giving years of service awards.
With every mile that truckers make, they add up on the pile of driving experience over the years. So why not recognize that experience and organize a years of service award program?
Doing the same job for years, like example driving a bucket truck for many years, will make you a pro for bucket trucks . On the other side when you do that job for the same company for year after year, makes you a loyal employee that very much deserve the prize for years of service award.
Many organizations are seeing significant gains in employee morale and engagement through the effective use of this award program.
The best trucking companies to work for will definitely have a “Years of Service Award” to honor and appreciate those who have devoted years of life in order to serve their company.
