Today, Swedish truck transports are ensured daily by more than 15,000 companies, mainly hauliers. Combined, they have around 65,000 full-time employees, which is more than two percent of the Swedish workforce. 4 out of 10 hauliers state that they have difficulty finding new drivers. Securing their most important assets – their employees – is crucial for long-term profitability.
We have previously noted that the majority of today’s professional drivers will soon be retiring, and not enough new drivers are replacing them. New figures from TYA show that 33 percent of companies need to hire new staff, equating to 2,648 truck drivers over the next six months and 5,044 for the full year.
A new generation of drivers is now expected to step in. Today, the profession includes more complex tasks such as working with IT systems, customer contacts, service, and cargo securing, and there are more women in the profession than there were a few years ago.
Today, it is Generation Y/millennials, i.e. 20-34-year-olds, who are now entering the labour market, and they are the first generation to truly embrace the concept of a healthy work-life balance. This generational shift will result in major changes to which hauliers must adapt. Ultimately, however, the hauliers’ main challenge is always to retain skilled drivers and attract new ones, which is a prerequisite for maintaining profitability.
Guaranteed job straight after high school
To find new workers, you need to consider what opportunities exist for recruitment and training and how to work with diversity. Something positive for the transport and haulage industry is the magazine Näringslivet’s new compilation of vocational training courses that lead to jobs, where the Vehicle and Transport Programme comes out on top! Theemployment rate, i.e. the number of graduates who have found a job, for the Vehicle and Transport Programme stands at 67 percent after one year and 77 percent after three years.
Ulrika Dorsch, CEO of UT Transport i Norr with 120 employees, admits that it is difficult to find employees with the right skills and profile today. UT Transport’s skills supply strategy is to try to be engaged in all the different arenas that exist in order to recruit the right skills quickly, since individuals who graduate from the Vehicle and Transport Programme are highly sought after by many operators.
5 proactive tips for recruiting the right staff at the right time
- Collaborate with vocational schools and educational institutions
- Take on interns and take good care of them so they want to return.
- Sit on course councils at the schools
- Understand that an inclusive work environment that welcomes diversity increases the chances of recruiting the right skills
- Make sure you are heard and seen. Have the courage to share your reality and advertise your business.
Employees are an investment, not a cost
Viewing recruitment and employees as long-term investments helps many companies to increase profitability and competitiveness for the future. There are useful templates and tools for calculating employee turnover costs. No matter which tool or method you choose, it’s important to carefully analyse and understand employee turnover costs in order to make informed decisions that can help increase profitability and employee retention.
Invest in recruitment and get happy employees. It’s an investment that creates profitability and success!
If you want to keep track of how employee turnover changes over time, you can divide the number of employees who have left by the total number of employees during a period, e.g. 6 months, and use that as a factor to follow up and forecast the trend over the next 6 months.
What can you do to retain employees and reduce employee turnover?
There can be many reasons employees choose to leave a company. These include a poor company culture, low job satisfaction, lack of career development, low pay, poor management, too much stress, and limited opportunities for growth and development. It’s clearly important that companies identify the causes of employee turnover so that they can take action to solve the problems.
The advantage of investing in your staff that staff turnover is reduced and you avoid unnecessary recruitment processes. This, in turn, leads to greater experience amongst staff, which results in increased productivity and quality. This also strengthens the company’s reputation, and through that, the company’s attractiveness to new employees automatically increases, all of which creates an upward spiral for the business.
5 tips for retaining your employees:
- Make sure that you offer a good, attractive company culture
- Strive for work-life balance for employees
- Strive for diverse working groups – this creates good conditions for a healthy workplace where everyone feels included and is given the opportunity to influence the work.
- Offer competitive benefits, salaries, and development opportunities
- Offer health-promoting benefits such as wellness allowance and opportunities for regular exercise during working hours
