Recommendations to company's leadership

Firm needs to examine why newer workers quit

In today's tight labor market, every company is having trouble filling vacancies. Therefore, B.J. Transport, like all companies, needs to take a hard look at its policies and practices on retaining, recruiting and hiring employees.

B.J. Transport has a 60 percent turnover, and keeping more employees would significantly reduce the hiring problems. The losses tend to be the newest 20 percent of employees who quit over minor incidents. Since these 'minor' incidents result in major hiring problems for the owners, it would be worthwhile to reframe these occurrences as "major, serious incidents."

With this heightened focus, owners will investigate these incidents to identify root causes and make changes to ensure that these do not recur. Ask returning employees why they left, and remedy those conditions. If an employee does quit for any reason, the owners should immediately talk to the employee to ask questions, rectify, clarify, explain the situation, and hopefully prevent the termination.

The orientation process is an opportunity to emphasize the owner's open door policy, the intent to work with all employees to resolve issues and the owner's appreciation for their efforts. Meeting the owner and top managers who say and then demonstrate that they value employees will go a long way to retaining employees when incidents occur.

If qualified candidates are scarce, it's time to innovate. For B.J. Transport, it makes sense to expand on the word-of-mouth truck stop success. How can B.J. get its name at more truck stops, perhaps in a broader geographical area? Could B.J. get a list of all licensed drivers in the counties they cover? How about going after people who might relocate from other states? How about moving van drivers? B.J.'s hiring process should be reviewed to make it as speedy and streamlined as possible. Emphasize the positive features that B.J. offers compared with other firms, especially those features that attracted prior employees to return (weekends home, fair wages with increasing diesel fuel costs). Have interviews scripted to efficiently gather the data you need to make a decision. Have all interviewers meet the same day to share information and make a decision, pending license review, etc. The more quickly you can get back to the candidate, the better.