High team morale equates to safety and productivity. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, engaged drivers get into 48% fewer collisions than the average driver.
Collisions, of course, are bad for business. They risk the safety of the people who work for you, and they can cost you a fortune in repair bills and legal fees.
So, what can you do to engage your field employees and keep them focused on the road?
An incentive program will help. Here’s how you can design an incentive program that effectively encourages your field employees to stay positive, drive safe, and be productive:
Ask For Their Input
Sure, you’re the boss. You have the power to make all the decisions that affect your business.
But that doesn’t mean you should just bark orders at your employees and treat them like your subordinates. Treat them like equals. Regularly ask them if they have any ideas about how your business could be improved.
Even if you don’t implement any of their ideas, asking for their input will make them feel respected and boost team morale. A happy team wants to work harder for you.
And if you do implement an employee’s idea, you can give them a reward, like a cash bonus.
That will convince them to spend more of their mental energy thinking about how to make your business better. They might even come up with ideas that you can use for your incentive program.
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Be Fair
Your employees will only be motivated by an incentive program if the rewards are based on an accurate assessment of employee performance.
If rewards are given to those who don’t deserve them, employees will have no reason to pursue them.
That’s why you need route optimization software with a GPS tracking feature. Such a tool allows you to collect detailed data on field employee performance.
Your field employees’ mobile phones can act as GPS trackers to show you exactly what they did when they were on the clock. You’ll be able to see if an employee is good about sticking to their route and staying on schedule… or, alternatively, if they have a habit of slacking off and wasting time. You’ll know who deserves rewards and who doesn’t. That’s the magic of route optimization software.
After you collect tracking data, make sure to share it with your field employees. That way, they will know you were being completely objective when you decided who would get bonuses, promotions, and other rewards.
Tell your field employees what benchmarks they need to hit to qualify for rewards. Then, they can use route optimization software to keep track of their progress. You can give different permissions to different users, which means you can set it up so that field employees can only view their own tracking data while you can view everyone’s tracking data.
What has been your approach to boosting driver morale? Do you have any questions about this article? Feel free to let us know in the comments section below.
Finally, answering the following three questions correctly will confirm that you understand how you can use incentives to increase team morale:
- Why should you ask for your employees’ input?
- How can you use route optimization software to show that you are fair and objective?
- How can drivers track their progress in an incentive program?
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