Dispatchers Who To Hire, How To Train Them
Dispatchers can be key to driver retention, and they'll play a big role in the changeover to new hours of service rules.
Patricia Smith
Senior Editor
Dispatchers can have a huge impact on driver turnover and, in many organizations, have equal responsibility for fleet productivity and customer satisfaction. Come Jan. 4, the job of making new hours of service rules work will likely fall to many dispatchers. That makes finding and keeping good dispatchers as important - and almost as tough - as finding and keeping good drivers.
The Right Person For The Job
Titles and responsibilities vary significantly from company to company. In some, dispatchers, fleet managers or driver managers seem to be responsible for everything from customer service to driver morale. Other carriers split duties: dispatchers concentrate on moving freight while driver managers deal with personnel issues.
Whatever the organizational structure, employee management consultants say it's important that drivers have a central point of contact - someone who can answer their questions, go to bat for them when needed, get to know their weaknesses and skills. At the same time, that person should have the authority to make decisions affecting their drivers and to discipline them when necessary. Essentially, what they need is a "boss" and the first step to creating good driver bosses is to hire the right people for the job.
In HDT interviews with drivers and dispatchers (see accompanying story), driving experience is clearly the most popular qualification for being a good dispatcher or driver manager. Staffing dispatch from the driver ranks "in and of itself is not a bad thing," says Greg Mechler, senior partner in The Human Advantage, a Plano, Texas-based management consulting firm that works extensively with trucking companies. But ex-drivers often fail as dispatchers simply because they lack other training and qualifications for the job.
Companies that haven't established a good basis for making hiring decisions "often end up promoting drivers with a gift of gab, but not necessarily the other skills needed to be a good dispatcher or manager."
Behavioral assessments in fact show that the personality traits exhibited by most successful dispatchers or fleet managers are almost totally opposite those exhibited by successful drivers. Mechler emphasizes that there are exceptions to every rule, and performance depends on a variety of factors. Based on their studies, however, people who do well as truck drivers are generally patient and easy going. They tend to take things one step at a time. They want to know what's expected of them, what the rules are, and that those rules are systematically enforced.
"They're capable of managing their own piece of equipment, but they don't want to be in charge of other people," Mechler says, "which is why they're driving, not managing."
Good dispatchers, on the other hand, typically score high in the areas of dominance and extraversion, but low in patience and conformity. "They're hard driving, fast decisions makers," he notes. "They're confident, capable and outgoing. They look at the world with a big picture point-of-view as opposed to details. They're going to make things happen."
Along with the right personality or temperament, dispatchers need some basic knowledge and abilities.
"We feel we're in the communications business so our fleet managers really have to be good communicators and logical thinkers," says John Basill, vice president of human resources for Dart Transit, one of the country's largest all-owner-operator fleets. "Sure, everybody would like someone who has been in the industry for a long time, but some of our most successful fleet managers have come out of other industries. They have excellent people skills and they develop excellent rapport with the contractors."
A successful dispatcher or driver manager also needs to know business fundamentals - revenue, costs, margins, etc. - and how they apply to trucking. "If you don't understand some of those basic principles, you don't make good decisions," says Mechler.
And these days, dispatchers must be comfortable with computers. One of the biggest complaints we heard from dispatchers is that drivers don't keep in touch. Vehicle tracking and mobile communications systems can ease those problems. Dispatch software can help match loads with trucks and drivers, thus reducing paper shuffling and assignment delays.
"With our software, dispatchers don't have to go searching for information since everything is there for them on one screen," notes Steve Ruffner, vice president of marketing for McLeod Software. "You can still maintain a high level of interaction; you just don't have to spend as much time as before looking for the information to communicate to the driver."
Most systems today are relatively easy to use and designed to help reduce the legendary stress of a typical dispatcher. A good system can increase dispatcher productivity, often more than doubling the number of drivers one person can handle. But Ruffner stresses that technology isn't the silver bullet that will erase a troubled carrier's problems. "The best technology in the world won't make up for a poorly constructed organizational plan."
A Failure To Communicate
Too many companies perceive dispatchers or driver managers as information givers rather than managers, says Mechler. They are seldom involved in decisions that affect drivers and sometimes don't get news of big changes until they start getting complaints from their drivers. In some companies, safety departments have the authority to fire a driver without consulting or even alerting the driver manager. And it's not uncommon for payroll to make changes in the way settlements are handled without briefing the driver managers.
"That's a big mistake because you have all kinds of different people controlling the driver, which contributes to driver turnover," he says. "The driver managers' authority is diminished so they're not as effective as they can be."
In many companies, dispatchers and driver managers have little or no interaction with sales and marketing. "It's vital that sales people talk regularly with dispatchers to make sure that what they're promising customers is communicated to the dispatcher and the dispatcher is actually able to meet those promises," advises Ed Emerick, corporate manager-consulting and educational resources, J.J. Keller & Associates. "The dispatchers are the people with first-hand knowledge of delays that will prevent drivers from getting where they need to be."
"The more driver managers knows about the customer, the more they can communicate to the driver," says Mechler. "If they can tell a driver why the customer needs something done a certain way, it can actually help that driver's self-esteem. He doesn't feel like he's at the bottom of the barrel, as they often do. Instead, he knows he's performing a critical function for the customer."
One way to open the lines of communications between departments is through shared training. At Dart, for instance, fleet managers get leadership training alongside people from billing, maintenance, pricing and marketing. And open communications is an organizational goal.
"We're a very open company with a flat organizational structure," says Basill. "We want everyone to feel free to bring operating concerns forward and to do it without thinking twice about it. There aren't a lot of scheduled meetings. If something needs to be addressed you can walk into the office of the operations vice president or the national accounts vice president, sit down and talk about it."
Sit With Joe
Many companies today still use what Mechler calls the "sit with Joe" method of training. "New dispatchers sit with veterans for a week or so before they're turned loose on their own - usually with no evaluation or testing to determine what they know or have learned," he explains.
"Sometimes, Joe is a good trainer and, by the luck of the draw, you end up getting a pretty good orientation. But most of the time Joe is a good performer because he has little tricks he's not willing to share with anybody else. And he's a fast-paced person, working 90 miles a minute while the new guy is trying to follow along. The new guy doesn't want to look stupid, so he muddles through. At the end of the week, very little knowledge has actually been transmitted. Hopefully you've hired somebody who can fend for themselves and figure things out, but it's a painful way to go."
While on-the-job training is still necessary to learn specific operations, there are tools available to help new dispatchers learn necessary communications, problem-solving and relationship skills.
The Daily Dispatch Challenge, developed by the Truckload Carrier Assn., is a multimedia, interactive training CD that basically simulates a typical "day in the life" of a fleet manager. It presents multiple job-related issues and problems the user must resolve, and offers feedback and guidance. TCA will soon add a Dispatch Challenge workbook that can be used with the CD or as a stand-alone training tool.
The Challenge is typically used for new dispatcher training but fleet managers can also use it to refresh their skills a few months - or years - into the job. South Carolina based G&P Trucking sometimes organizes contests between several experienced dispatchers to see who scores the highest. And they occasionally invite a driver to "play."
"Drivers sometimes tend to think that we're not doing anything proactive to train our dispatchers and driver supervisors about the problems on the road," explains G&P President Clifton Parker. "We've had some drivers come in and take the challenge so they can see that we do care about their problems."
J.J. Keller's Essential Dispatcher Skills Training Kit, including video and workbook, is designed to help dispatchers learn how to establish better relationships with drivers while making day-to-day decisions that streamline operations and improve profitability. The company also offers a video series on building better relationships.
Dispatcher-Interpersonal Skills, developed by the Canadian Trucking Human Resources Council, is an online training program offered through Training Alternatives Inc. The course covers planning and equipment utilization, load assignment, dispatching and legal requirements affecting dispatch. TAI President Richard Ross admits that the regulations section concentrates on Canadian laws - with some U.S. rules for cross-border truckers - but other modules are general enough to work in most any type of U.S. or Canadian operation.
Dispatchers, fleet managers, and even carrier executives often study shoulder-to-shoulder at the Texas Motor Transportation Assn.'s leadership training course. TMTA President and CEO Bill Webb describes it as a broad-based program with leadership principles applied to a variety of operations and management situations - even dealing with the media.
"We teach people to be leaders as opposed to managers," he says. "When you're managing, you tell people what to do. When you're leading, you show people what to do."
The course was originally intended for "next generation" fleet owners, i.e. people in line to take over the family trucking business. But it now attracts a diverse group from all levels of carrier operations and administration. "In a class of 50 people we'll have everything from dispatchers to human resource managers to vice presidents to company owners," Webb notes. "What we're talking about is how to get everybody on board and moving in the same direction for the right reason."
How Are They Doing?
Dispatchers and driver managers should be involved and responsible, they should also be accountable, stresses Mechler. "They should have a clear picture of their job responsibilities and how their performance will be measured."
Along with performance measurements (on-time deliveries, empty miles, etc.), he recommends that driver managers be accountable for safety and turnover. "The safety department should be a resource to help drivers and driver managers accomplish safety goals, but the only person who has an opportunity to affect safety on a day-to-day basis is the driver manager," he explains.
By the same token, payroll, human resources, maintenance and all other departments within the company should be ready and willing to help improve driver relations and solve driver problems. But the buck has to stop somewhere.
"If nobody is specifically accountable for driver turnover, there is no accountability," he says. "Everybody ends up pointing to everyone else and management looks at turnover as a problem that can't be solved."
For more information.
Following is contact information for the programs and services mentioned in this article. You can find other consulting, management and training resources through the Product & Services directory at www.truckinginfo.com.
• Canadian Trucking Human Resources Council, (613) 244-4800, www.cthrc.com.
• J.J. Keller & Associates, (800) 327-6868, www.jjkeller.com.
• McLeod Software, (205) 823-5100, www.Mcleodsoftware.com.
• Texas Motor Transportation Assn, (800) 727-7135 or www.tmta.com.
• The Human Advantage<, (800) 824-4908, www.thehumanadvantage.com.
• Training Alternatives Inc., (416) 598-1795, www.trainingalternatives.com.
• Truckload Carrier Assn., (703) 838-1950, www.truckload.org.
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