As companies face an ongoing driver shortage, hiring managers are scrambling to find ways to recruit safe drivers. What driver recruiting tips can you implement that will expand your pool of driver applicants while still keeping safety a top priority? The solution may be simpler than you think. It’s a strategy known as “premedial” training.
Download Now | How to Craft a Driver Onboarding Process for Increased Savings and Employee Retention
What Is Premedial Training?
To explain premedial training, we need to first break down how we categorize driver training as a whole. This includes three different but equally important safety strategy buckets:
Frequent training proactively prevents future violations and crashes. This may include assigning distracted driving courses, implementing a defensive driving program or even covering seasonal topics such as winter driving safety. This approach ensures that both newer and experienced drivers continuously practice critical driving skills that promote safer behaviors behind the wheel.
Remedial training helps you take immediate action after someone receives a violation. With this approach, companies can assign specific training courses that directly target poor driving behaviors – ensuring that the driver is well aware of their error and knows exactly how to fix it. This strategy reduces the likelihood of the driver causing a crash in the future.
Premedial training, or remedial training assigned to new hires based on previous violations, works specifically to expand your hiring pool. If you’re looking to hire but don’t have enough applicants in your preferred qualification buckets, you can use premedial training to cast a wider net. It’s possible that the candidates you usually reject due to minor driving record blemishes could actually be safe, reliable and qualified drivers if they’re properly trained.
For example, let’s say it’s the holiday season and you can’t find enough qualified drivers that fit your safety standards. You don’t want to hire drivers with blemishes on their record, but being understaffed isn’t an option. Instead of hoping for the best, you can add premedial training to each borderline driver’s online onboarding program to help the driver improve specific skills and meet the standards outlined in your safety policy before they hit the road.
4 Steps for Implementing a Premedial Fleet Training Strategy
A premedial training strategy includes a four-step process:
1. Determine Your Violation Threshold – determine the level of violations you’re willing to accept with new hires to ensure you’re not putting dangerous drivers on the road or your company at risk.
2. Perform Your Background Check – Use Motor Vehicle Records (MVRs) to identify drivers’ violations and determine whether or not they’re something you’re comfortable addressing with premedial training.
3. Assign Premedial Courses Before In-Person Training – assign targeted courses to remediate these specific violations.
4. Implement Ongoing Monitoring and Training – ensure these new drivers remain safe once they are out on the road and driving on behalf of your company with proactive monitoring and training.
Leverage Online Driver Training Courses
Online premedial courses will help you train new drivers faster, cheaper and with less effort. If you require drivers to complete this training virtually before they attend in person, you can focus in-person training on behind-the-wheel and real-world instruction.
A solid retention strategy requires an effective driver onboarding process. Discover four compelling benefits that stem from enhancing your team’s approach to onboarding by downloading our free guide below!
