Every business owner and leader knows that retention marketing – marketing designed to retain customers – is vital to success. What I’ve noticed, though, is many businesses don’t extend that same energy and attention to employee retention – and they’re stuck with high turnover rates as a result.
Retention marketing campaigns aren’t just for customers. Your retention marketing efforts should also be focused on the people powering your company each day: your employees.
If you’re going through constant driver turnover, for example, or struggling to fill seats, you’re going to be dealing with unfinished projects, unfilled orders and quickly evolving chaos. That not only creates bad morale, it can lead to losing customers as well. The good news is, there are several effective marketing strategies that can help ensure your drivers and your wider team will be with you for the long haul. Here are five of the best ones.
Tap into the virtual community.
Our roots are in the trucking industry, so we understand one of the biggest challenges for truck drivers: they work long, nontraditional hours, often alone, and away from their families and loved ones.
Truck drivers are among the many professionals who have turned to one place for camaraderie, tips and advice: social media. If you want to know how your team really feels, then you need to be joining the social media conversation, too.
That being said: you want to avoid any Steve Buscemi “How do you do, fellow kids?” moments. Your goal here isn’t to awkwardly insert yourself into employee conversations. It’s to make employees aware that you’re present, you’re listening to their issues, and you’re ready to make changes where necessary.
A good way to start is to find the grassroots online communities. These are usually launched by drivers, for drivers. They’re where you’re most likely to learn your drivers’ needs and wants, and make changes accordingly (this goes for all other industries, too!). From there, you can start to build out plans for your own social sites.
Use social to make you – and your drivers – shine.
The key to effective employee retention marketing is participating on social media as a company, authentically and daily. This means taking the opportunity to make sure you, your drivers, and ALL employees shine. Here’s a few great tactics to make that happen.
- Use social media to share announcements, big wins, milestones and every employee accomplishment that’s worth celebrating. You set the tone for your company culture. You can make sure it’s a good one by high-fiving the biggest highs you and your employees achieve.
- Put your drivers front and centre. It’s worth repeating: your truck drivers (and all your employees) are the backbone of your company. Design your posts through the lens of a driver’s eyes: how is this news important to them? What they need to know first? What are you trying to share about them so the public knows? Make it clear that every action you take is with your drivers in mind.
- Most importantly: use social media to listen. You can find out in real time if your team is unhappy about something. You can also make it clear what steps you’re taking to address it.
Like attracts like, so reward those referrals.
Possibly your best source for great new employees is from your current employees. There are tons of ways to maximize your employee referrals (in fact, we’ve written a whole piece on it). It’s worth reiterating, though, that if someone on your team goes out of their way to recommend a rock star new addition, then you should reward them for it. Especially since drivers recommended by long-term employees are more likely to stick with you for the long term.
They tend to just plain fit.
Your first step, of course, is to make sure your employees KNOW you have a referral program. Then you need to make sure they know how they’ll benefit from recommending someone to the team.
- Create a pinned post about the referral program, and pin it to the top of your employee communications.
- Once you’ve done that, make sure your referral awards are impressive. $1,000 is good, more is even better.
- You can also consider awards like gift cards, extra vacation days and free company trips.
Support your employees’ spouses.
Truck driver spouses, of course, are often the unsung heroes of the profession. They’re the ones supporting their husband or wife from the sidelines, all while keeping things running at home. And they’re not the only ones in this position (ask anyone married to a store manager during the holiday season!).
This is why you retention marketing efforts need to extend to spouses as well. Otherwise, you’ll have team members looking elsewhere for a better work-life balance. Here’s a few strategies for you to try.
- Host family events several times throughout the year – and make them free and accessible. If you’re in trucking, have a spousal rider program.
- Make some of your content shareable. Any announcements or other non-confidential news should be easy to share with spouses and family.
- If you’re a B to C business, spousal discounts go a long way to making employees and their families feel valued.
- Hold a Spousal Appreciation Day (or week!) with gift cards and other rewards for employee spouses.
- Help your employees’ spouses support one another. Launch an online community support space for these spouses, either through your intranet or as a private social media group. If your employees have already taken it upon themselves to start one, then by all means, amplify it.
Providing support to spouses makes it easier for them to support your employees – and makes it more likely those employees will stick with you for the long haul. Figuratively and literally!
Encourage employee advocacy (especially if you’re a fleet).
Make it clear that you welcome and encourage employee feedback and concerns. You can do this by creating an environment – both real life and virtual – that allows your team to advocate for what they need. Here are a few tips how.
- Design a dedicated “employee hotline” portal and make sure everyone knows how to use it. This can be as simple as a dedicated email address where employees can address any concerns. If you’re a larger company, you can house your Employee Rights and Responsibilities here, along with employee guides, help lines, and everything else related to employee advocacy.
- Appoint a dedicated employee advocate from your staff. Better still, have your team choose them! This person will be responsible for keeping your team informed of any changes, updates, and replies from you. Which brings me to my next point:
- Post regular updates from you and other executives. If you’ve made some changes for the better, make sure everyone knows. If the changes are still a work in progress, let people know as well. Some things take time, after all.
- It’s worth repeating: say what you mean and mean what you say. If you’ve promised to do better, if you’ve promised big changes, then you need to actually follow through.
Employee advocacy portals aren’t just for serious business, though. They’re also the ideal place for this:
When you make the news, be the first to congratulate your team.
A feature article in a travel magazine, an interview for the regional news, or any mention in the media is a company-wide accomplishment. As the boss, the first congratulations should come from you. Blast it out everywhere, too: on your socials, in your newsletters, on company Zoom chats. Make it clear how proud you are of your team.
Do the same thing for:
- Individual employee successes and awards
- Personal employee achievements (with their permission first)
- Great reviews from customers and contractors
It’s part of your job to be your employees’ biggest advocate, and if you follow through on that, you’re more likely to up your retention rates when you do.
If you keep the same energy you use for customer retention and expend it on employee retention, you’ll build a lasting team that wants to work hard for you. Ready to get started? KAT Media can help. Give us a call today.