Webinar Replay #4: Communication & Partnership Drive Orientation

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Craig Hart: Okay, well, this is our third episode of our Fast Forward Webinar series where we look ahead with industry experts.

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Craig Hart: This one we’re calling informally. We’re in this Together Communication and Partnership Drive Orientation. Now, my name is Craig Hart.

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Craig Hart: I am the product manager here at Vertical Alliance Group, some of you know us as Infinit-I and our guest panelists today are Mr. Paul Schmitz

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Craig Hart: Who is safety director with Wayne Transports Inc out of Minnesota. And Leslie Smith, who is Paul’s Client Success Representative here on our end at Infinit-I.

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Craig Hart: Now this is one of a series of webinars that we’ve done focusing on

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Craig Hart: Orientation that came about because we had a lot of client response wanting to set up orientation that worked around social distancing guidelines.

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Craig Hart: So that they were able to keep their home office safe keep their drivers safe keep their new recruits safe.

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Craig Hart: We did have a previous guest on our webinar about five weeks ago. Pat Landreth with Ozark Motor Lines. I know he shared a lot of great information that that people found very insightful in terms of trying to set up their own programs.

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Craig Hart: And we reached out to Paul because Paul is also a big proponent of online orientation and Paul has a very good system in place that is very

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Craig Hart: regimented specific but also include some elements that aren’t included in many other online orientation setups in terms of

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Craig Hart: Follow up pieces that are built out into the system and and some other details. We’ll talk about here in a second. So I wanted to

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Craig Hart: To get him on the call, so that he can share his insight into what is working for his organization and how he went about building this out to work for his team.

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Craig Hart: But something else, we also realized as we were putting this webinar together is on previous webinars we have talked about our Client Success Department.

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Craig Hart: Our CSRs and we talked about them very broadly. We did not go into much detail about what we do.

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Craig Hart: And Leslie and Paul have a fantastic working relationship together so it seemed like a natural and good idea to get them on the call together so they can talk about how they work to make this happen because

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Craig Hart: Our Client Success Team is unique to our organization. We don’t believe in a faceless customer service experience. We don’t believe good customer service is where you’re calling a stranger.

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Craig Hart: That you have to potentially talk to a stranger. Every time that you call in and have to start over your conversations. We believe that if we can service your account correctly that just stay with us forever.

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Craig Hart: And this will be an opportunity to showcase how that works and how it can work very, very successfully. So Paul, would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself.

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Paul Schmitz: Fantastic, Craig. Thank you so much for having me here. I’m so glad that Leslie’s on the call. She’s gonna definitely help provide me some a little bit of support of this is the first webinar. I’ve done

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Paul Schmitz: But a little bit about myself fantastic opportunity here. I’m a, I’m a 20 year Force veteran.

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Paul Schmitz: And my primary background has been in the technology computer programs working in safety and training and developing training courses. So I come by a lot of this in a fairly natural manner, and I’ve got the experience

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Paul Schmitz: But I do want to premise this by saying that you don’t have to have these backgrounds to be able to do what we’ve accomplished here with Infinit-I and Vertical Alliance.

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Paul Schmitz: Focusing on the last 10 years of what I’ve done is been involved in transportation, the first seven years were with my first company where I learned a lot.

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Paul Schmitz: Started out in a CSA compliance role, learning about CSA 2010 and then took on the their computers and telematics systems deployed ELDs.

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Paul Schmitz: Early on, probably. About nine years ago and then very quickly realized that, you know, they didn’t have a training program within their

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Paul Schmitz: I started working more on their safety management programs and a lot of things that that were essentially missing within their safety programs and compliance, one of the focuses in which brought me to

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Paul Schmitz: Vertical Alliance Group years ago was the training program that being a trainer myself and having an educational background and development.

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Paul Schmitz: I saw that there was just an immediate need to get these guys and gals some, you know, some information to get them aware of what’s going on out there and help them to, you know, be better at what they do.

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Paul Schmitz: So, you know, I started my relationship with Vertical Alliance actually believe my first one was 2012 I believe was early 2012 I contacted them in 2011

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Paul Schmitz: And then made the made the final leap with ownership in 2012 so I’ve had a good relationship and then

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Paul Schmitz: Most recently started with Wayne Transports, they hired me on as our safety director and again notice there wasn’t a training program. And so that was my first focus was to

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Paul Schmitz: You know, get the training started right away and it in, that’s when my relationship with Leslie started was was way back then, it seems like you know two and a half years, but it also feels like I’ve known pretty much most of my life.

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Craig Hart: With what we’ve gone through

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Paul Schmitz: So yeah, that’s a little bit about me Wayne Transports is a 600 plus truck fleet, we have multi

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Paul Schmitz: We have a lot of different loads that we haul mostly fuels, petroleum products, asphalt. We do some chemicals and food grade products and

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Paul Schmitz: We cover nine terminals and pretty much, you know, touch, almost every state in the country at one point or another, plus up into Canada. So we’re spread out quite a bit.

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Craig Hart: Excellent. Excellent. All right. Leslie, introduce yourself to us.

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Craig Hart: Leslie, are you on mute?

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Paul Schmitz: Yes, she is.

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Craig Hart: I think she is

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Craig Hart: Okay. While we’re waiting to get Leslie back

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Craig Hart: I was interesting that you mentioned the, the two times that you have been to organizations you walked in the door and there was no safety program. And I’m sure that’s something that other folks on this call.

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Craig Hart: can sympathize with it’s definitely a reframe that I hear from other organizations that they have

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Craig Hart: needs for safety training and then by the time they walk in the door and they are gifted an empty file cabinet that they then have to go and recreate whole cloth.

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Craig Hart: What’s going on, so that they can survive an audit and they can have a safe program and they can minimize accidents and it’s an hopefully is occurring less and less as our industry matures more, but it is something I hear very frequently, so

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Paul Schmitz: It is it’s an unfortunate situation, you know, for someone walking into a situation walking into that and looking at it, especially if they know

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Paul Schmitz: Not only the you know the the need for the education and the training and how important it is, you know, to the driver force.

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Paul Schmitz: As far as that engagement and that contact and you know keeping that flow going

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Paul Schmitz: But also from a legal standpoint, it’s just huge. And I really didn’t realize that until I had been well into my tenure with my last company and been involved in court cases. And that’s when the ugly truth actually came out about how absolutely

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Paul Schmitz: critical having a good training program in place in the record keeping, to be able to validate that in a court situation.

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Craig Hart: Okay. All right. I think we figured out the situation here with Leslie

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Craig Hart: Hold on, maybe we haven’t

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Paul Schmitz: This is a first. All right. Normally, Leslie. I can. She’s never muted. Okay, so this is kind of one is kind of an interesting thing that I get to talk more than she does.

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Craig Hart: Don’t worry, I am I am sure she will make up for that. Let me go ahead here to the next slide. Since you talked a little bit about

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Craig Hart: Some of the information on this already. So what I did is I talked to Leslie and put together an infographic here.

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Craig Hart: Of how your orientation process works from the beginning to also additional follow up items that you do in person and then follow up items that you have scheduled out

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Craig Hart: farther into the pipeline. Now I think most folks have this first half here on the left.

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Craig Hart: Down pretty well up to the drive test and the drug screening, but then the 30 day orientation follow up.

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Craig Hart: and the 60 day orientation follow up. I’m very excited to hear you talk about once we get to those because that is something

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Craig Hart: That is unconventional that’s not something that we encounter very often when we see orientation programs built out even though it is something that

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Craig Hart: Does deliver higher results and higher retention of information and actually probably your insurance company if they see this. They love this because this is something they absolutely recommend that people do.

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Craig Hart: As as they’re coming along that you do those follow up items because if you tell someone something one time. Great.

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Craig Hart: If you’re expecting them to retain that then for the next 12 months without going back and revisiting that information that’s problematic.

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Craig Hart: And anything that can be done to reinforce is awesome. So this orientation piece here. What do you typically include in this bucket. I know this is your general company information policies, procedures, what do you have them go through there.

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Paul Schmitz: So, you know, we, if I could, what I’d like to do is kind of walk you as quickly as I can, into what

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Paul Schmitz: Became this. So originally we had what you had talked about was a very similar orientation.

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Paul Schmitz: Online. Once we built the online courses we said here, you have to complete all these before you show up, which is very typical. I mean, several hours worth of video content, PDF content, acknowledging this, acknowledging that

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Paul Schmitz: and what I found when I was doing orientations, because I do all orientations. I meet all the drivers when they come through.

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Paul Schmitz: Is I would ask them, How did you like the orientation training. What was your feedback. And I asked us a lot of very critical questions. And over the course of time, I realized

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Paul Schmitz: That because we were pushing so much information at them in requiring this they were pushing themselves through it and they weren’t getting what they really what we wanted them to get out of it. It was just checking a box.

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Paul Schmitz: I didn’t want that box to just be checked. I felt that we were doing them a disservice on the company. So I looked at it a little more credit. Like, what can we do, what if we broke it up. What is that going to accomplish and

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Paul Schmitz: By breaking it up into our initial orientation and then spreading it out it accomplished, not only better retention and there’s in

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Paul Schmitz: The drivers engagement, but it also accomplished, getting them started on the process of doing continual training. So in answer to the question orientation course.

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Paul Schmitz: We generally start out as you said, with your information background on, you know, the company PDFs and different slides that you introduce them. We hit a lot of that in our

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Paul Schmitz: Face to face orientation as well. So we need to have that in there. But, you know, we worked with a Great West Casualty. I know that there are

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Paul Schmitz: A big insurance company out there and there they have provided us with some excellent videos and they’re available on Infinit-I which is fantastic because of the partnership that that’s their.

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Paul Schmitz: and, you know, we certainly appreciate that. And then we also go into a CSA drive series. Now what we do with these value driven series from

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Paul Schmitz: From Great West and from the CSA series that you guys have and Hours of Service series is we don’t throw the entire boat at them at once we break it down into chunks that are important to us.

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Paul Schmitz: And, you know, each company has to decide what is important and what we do is we brought it down to about an hour and a half hour 40 minutes of

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Paul Schmitz: actual training. So what this does is it gets them in the door gets them accustomed to using the training, but it doesn’t overwhelm them for that. We add on top of that.

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Paul Schmitz: Anything that’s client specific such as the FISMA training or if they are going to be doing

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Paul Schmitz: something for HAZMAT then we run them through the HAZMAT general awareness one and two and get them certified for agent 126. So we cover all that before they get in. Now this creates a bit of a

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Paul Schmitz: we say a commitment to the program and it gives us shows us a commitment level by tracking their progress. You know how they’re getting it done quickly getting done. We get notifications to the system.

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Paul Schmitz: My training manager does and my hiring manager, they all get the notifications that tells us. Yep. They’re on track. So when they show up.

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Paul Schmitz: They already have all this under their belt and they’re ready to roll. And then we move on with the next step. Actually, I love the way you’ve got this laid out, Greg. This is, this is an awesome slide, by the way. Oh.

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Well, thanks.

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Paul Schmitz: I’m like, that’s sweet.

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Paul Schmitz: So yeah, the 30 day follow up. So what we do with the 30 days we bring them back in to the training program, you know, we let them know say hey look, we’re going to set you up with

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Paul Schmitz: More orientation courses more follow up, you know, has to be completed within the first 30 days and then we’re going to also set you up with some more for the next 30 days. So everything all orientation training and all these videos have to be completed, you know, by that 60th day. So

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Paul Schmitz: You know, all in all, we took when I got here. We had about seven or eight hours worth of videos, the guys would sit in a room with a headset on and stare at a computer and it was just painful to watch

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Craig Hart: Oh, yeah.

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Paul Schmitz: So,

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Paul Schmitz: What we did was we saved a ton of the drivers time a ton of the drivers brain cells and a pretty good chunk of change by adopting this type of

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Paul Schmitz: Orientation or onboarding process.

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Craig Hart: That’s awesome. I want to point out a couple things that you brought up first feedback on the orientation process. I love how you solicit that from the people that you have going through the system because

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Craig Hart: That’s critical. The drivers need to be able to respond towards how things are being presented with them, are they getting it. Are they not if they’re not what needs to be changed to be able to

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Craig Hart: Help with their retention of information, because as you pointed out with that seven eight hour video. How much are they going to retain from that. Is it going to be meaningful, will it be useful. Will it make them safer on the road.

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Craig Hart: I also love the fact that your training manager, you’re hiring manager all involved in the reporting on participation. So the this

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Craig Hart: multiple departments, as it were, are participating in the orientation process. Now when you were getting this initially set up, were there other departments that you worked with that push back on this.

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Paul Schmitz: I can’t say that we had a specific HARD PUSH BACK

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Paul Schmitz: Typically your relationship between the safety department in your operations is

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Paul Schmitz: How do I put this nicely.

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Craig Hart: Are they on the call today.

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Craig Hart: There may be some of them on the call, though. Yeah, the relationship. Typically, and transportation between operations safety is generally a stressed one, you know, we’re not seen as as helpers and as you know, people were trying to protect the company and

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Paul Schmitz: It were a hindrance to the operation. Some so many times. So it’s a mindset that has to go through be changed. Did I run into opposition with other departments.

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Paul Schmitz: Not directly. It was more along the lines of, you know, we need our drivers, we need them now what’s taking so long? So we had to find a way to get them through the system so

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Paul Schmitz: Get them through this training, make it effective so that when they got their driver you know they were ready to go.

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Paul Schmitz: Any anybody that presented themselves as a challenge in that area, Craig. It was the tactic that I took was I would approach them and I would ask them.

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Paul Schmitz: How do you want your driver to come to you okay and and the way you answer this is going to be very important in, you know, the way I view what you do.

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Paul Schmitz: Do you want a driver just to sit in a seat and deliver the goods or do you want a driver that’s prepared. That’s not going to make mistakes and be on the side of the road or

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Paul Schmitz: You know cost company money and embarrassment to you and be fully prepared to do that job, you tell me which driver you want. And that’s driver. I’ll give you.

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Craig Hart: Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Now I know that on previous webinars and communications that we talked to from perspective groups.

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Craig Hart: And even existing clients that are doing ongoing training and trying to grapple with this orientation piece. They’re trying to figure out how to get buy in from other departments and so I’m glad that they were able to hear that. I know that previously you and I had talked about that.

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Craig Hart: You were able to solicit their input. Make it something that it’s participatory for them so that they are

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Craig Hart: joining you it’s their thing to. It’s not just you inflicting your process on to them that they’re coming on board and they’re an active participant.

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Paul Schmitz: The

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Paul Schmitz: biggest thing, as you said, and it also has to do with leadership. All right. It’s when it comes to the other departments, primarily the only other department that I deal with that would have an issue would be operations.

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Paul Schmitz: But you also have the you know the lead managers and then the owners.

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Paul Schmitz: Yeah, by getting them all in a room and then explaining the you know the goals of the process and what you want to get your drivers to where you want them to be in the end.

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Paul Schmitz: And then soliciting you know their feedback and saying hey helped me develop this program and then they tell you what they feel is best because a lot of these guys are previous drivers. So I mean, they’ve got a different level of vision here.

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Paul Schmitz: Yeah and once they start talking about it. Then they own it.

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Craig Hart: Yeah.

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Paul Schmitz: I’m seeing, you know, it’s their program just as much as yours. And it’s it’s it when it works. It’s gorgeous.

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Craig Hart: Let me see here quick second to make sure I can get Leslie back on the line. She was having some technical issues, but I have been told they are resolved. Let me see if it will allow me to unmute her

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Craig Hart: Hmm, is not allowing me to unmute her so

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Craig Hart: Yes.

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Craig Hart: I’m here. Oh, you’re here. Hooray. You’re just being so quiet.

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Craig Hart: You’re being quiet as a church mouse in the background. Awesome.

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Leslie Smith: I went next

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Door.

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Leslie Smith: Morning.

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Leslie Smith: Morning.

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Craig Hart: Okay, well, Leslie. I don’t. I’m sure you’ve heard all this wonderful stuff that we have been talking about here on just take a quick second, if you would, and and let everyone on the call them, they know a little bit about you.

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Leslie Smith: Okay. I’m Leslie Smith. I’ve been with Infinit-I for almost three years now. I’ve been working with Paul about two and a half years now.

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Leslie Smith: I’m originally from Ohio. I have three boys. I’m a huge football fan is all my clients know I love the Buckeyes and the Bears so

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Leslie Smith: That’s just about it and I came from the insurance industry before here so

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Craig Hart: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, the thing that popped out on that whole spiel to me was that you guys have been working together for two and a half years, and that is

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Craig Hart: I mean, there are probably people on this call today that have had three to four safety managers in that same timeframe at their organization.

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Craig Hart: And potentially who knows how many anonymous customer service reps in other places that they’ve gone or services that they have used so

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Craig Hart: That longevity, to me, is very impressive and it. I think it really allows you guys to have some depth of understanding and long term planning of how

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Craig Hart: What Wayne has done successfully to get where they are now and what they can then do to continue that growth and success in the future. So, that is that is tremendous. Now,

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Craig Hart: One thing I did want to point out on this orientation process. One additional thing rather was the second box. This is FISMA

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Craig Hart: This client specific training, this Samsara training, and liquid asphalt training. Those are just examples of things. I know that you incorporate into orientation.

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Craig Hart: But I don’t think many people do I think probably the only one on the list that really jumps out for most folks would be the ELD training, they’ve got their own

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Craig Hart: Specific flavor of ELD that they want their people to know about, but an orientation, they really can afford to dream bigger. Especially now in the current ongoing health crisis that we’re in.

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Craig Hart: If there is client specific information that somebody needs to know in terms of how to operate on their sites or if they have specific rules about

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Craig Hart: what your drivers can and cannot access when they’re delivering now or if they should just be doing drop and hook and heading off with the next load.

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Craig Hart: That’s a great opportunity now within orientation to make sure that drivers understand those things.

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Craig Hart: And then with the liquid asphalt, with the FISMA training obviously those are specific to the loads that you haul. But there are other people on this call that

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Craig Hart: May also be hauling those same types of things that are probably holding off on

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Craig Hart: incorporating that training into orientation until other things happen or potentially later in the process and then just think that it’s it’s great to front load those things within orientation. It is not

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Craig Hart: conventionally, how we see orientation built. So I find that exciting because that is powerful stuff it’s specific to your organization, specific to Wayne and it’s absolutely mission critical information that people need to know to be able to haul the loads that you guys have.

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Paul Schmitz: Right and to, you know, to bring some focus on on that within the Infinit-I platform and the power of the

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Paul Schmitz: relationship that I have with Leslie.

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Paul Schmitz: You know, we create a, you know, several of our own videos. One thing that I’ve always been a proponent of is if you can bring fresh the freshest content that’s relevant to the driver that they recognize

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Paul Schmitz: and get it out in front of them.

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Paul Schmitz: You know, they’re going to eat it up. They’re going to be a lot more engaged in something that they see that they recognize that fits what they are rather than something that’s just, you know, Oh, I gotta watch another seat belt video, you know,

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Paul Schmitz: This stuff is client specific stuff is very important to get them ready and you know in working with Leslie. She’s always, you know, encouraged me and you know poked me.

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Paul Schmitz: From time to

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Paul Schmitz: time about getting this stuff.

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Paul Schmitz: Out there, because I’ll feed ideas to her, Well, what do you think about this, and my call. I got a client over here the kindness on like that and this and that and the other. I’m like, Okay, so I’m on the right track.

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Paul Schmitz: And so, bouncing stuff off of her was really helpful for me because she has such a broad knowledge within the industry.

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Paul Schmitz: Of different clients that do you know certain things and their success rate at it. So I mean what an absolutely

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Paul Schmitz: Fantastic, you know, asset to have, you know, in your in your team to, you know, some of it has that. And then of course she facilitates, you know, getting the stuff online as quickly as possible for us.

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Paul Schmitz: You know, the, the ELD, I actually do a lot of the videos myself just so they get used to see my face. I’m a friendlier face, not the safety director, that’s, you know, carrying a hammer in my hand. So

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Paul Schmitz: It helps.

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Paul Schmitz: Yeah, I really like our customized training that we put out to.

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Craig Hart: Excellent, excellent.

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Craig Hart: Anything, anything about that. Leslie that you want to say, I know you do work with multiple groups and Paul and Wayne are one of them.

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Craig Hart: But having that background with multiple other clients. It is very easy then to share what works one place to help Wayne and other organizations. It’s all about sharing the good stuff. What works, but also helping people with trying to avoid some of the pitfalls as well. I know.

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Leslie Smith: Absolutely. And, you know, just pushing that ongoing training monthly and you know as much as you can get them in the system. The more use to it they are, and they’ll continue to do it as well.

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Craig Hart: Excellent. All right. Now one thing I did want to point out this 30 day in the 60 day box. I’m sure there’s lots of people looking at this going,

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Craig Hart: How do you get anybody to commit to all this, because I know people struggle with orientation.

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Craig Hart: They have their drivers that are coming in from organizations where I’m sure you’ve been told what we didn’t do training and this your expectation of them both for company drivers, but also owner operators as well. I know owner operators.

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Craig Hart: for many groups out there can be a sticking point because there is the challenge that they may pick up stakes and go move to another organization.

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Craig Hart: That doesn’t have safety training or doesn’t have some sort of requirements that they feel that they don’t have to participate in, how are you

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Craig Hart: setting the stage for people coming to your organization that training is what they’re going to be doing with you and we’ll talk more here in a second about the ongoing piece that you also do

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Craig Hart: But I want to know, how do you get buy in from your drivers. How do you get buy in from your owner operators.

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Paul Schmitz: Isn’t that like the bazillion dollar question out there.

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Craig Hart: Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, once we once we have your miracle answer. We’re going to copy that and then send it to the world.

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Paul Schmitz: I don’t know if it’s a miracle answer. I’m you know I’m a sales guy at heart. You know, I believe that I can you know, sell ice water to Eskimos some days.

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Paul Schmitz: But

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Paul Schmitz: What the way I do it is basically I do it in the orientation portion itself.

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Paul Schmitz: Obviously, most drivers realize that any trucking company, they’re going to go to. They’re going to have to have they’re gonna have to do some sort of an orientation training. Right.

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Paul Schmitz: So by minimizing what we hit them with up front, you know, just hitting with maybe about an hour and a half.

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Paul Schmitz: You know, two hours max of,  you know, this online training, it introduces them to the platform. So they get a little taste of it.

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Paul Schmitz: So during orientation either our face to face, or our Zoom meetings because with the COVID-19 we’ve been doing a lot of Zoom orientations at remote locations. So we go face to face.

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Paul Schmitz: Zoom meetings with doing our orientation each person on our team comes through. Anyway, so during the orientation. This is when we begin to focus on why the training is there because

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Paul Schmitz: You get those questions. It’s like okay yeah I’ve been through this. Been there, done that. Why do I have to do it.

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Paul Schmitz: When you’re able to talk to a driver and explain the background behind the why. I believe in answering or giving the why, up front.

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Paul Schmitz: Because in almost every case, if you’re able to give the why, then they understand it if you just tell them to do it.

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Paul Schmitz: Because that’s what you do. They’re going to bucket, they’re going to come up with all kinds of reasons why they shouldn’t do it instead of the reasons why.

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Paul Schmitz: So typically an orientation we talk about what the training does. What’s the purpose of the training. It’s not just to take up your time. Okay. It’s not just to check a box.

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Paul Schmitz: The, the training serves a purpose of awareness and then we talk about the awareness game and how throughout their day you know they do hundreds and hundreds of decisions and all those decisions come from training that they’ve received or experience.

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Paul Schmitz: But so many times it’s easy to become complacent in what you do and lose that edge.

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Paul Schmitz: This awareness training that we start with an orientation and build off of and continue on throughout their career with us.

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Paul Schmitz: Helps to maintain that awareness level and keep them sharp. It’s like taking a knife to a sharpening stone. You got to keep it sharp. Otherwise, it loses its edge and then it becomes ineffective and, you know, and then in the wrong hands just downright dangerous, right.

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Craig Hart: Absolutely.

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Paul Schmitz: Then we start talking about the legal aspects of why training is so important and we bring up case studies of, you know, where

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Paul Schmitz: The drivers and the managers and the owners were asked about the training programs and can you show that the driver was trained in this specific area.

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Paul Schmitz: When were they trained. Did they sign off on this training. You know, there’s so many aspects of the legal thing and every case, I’ve been involved in has involved those questions.

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Paul Schmitz: And failure on that side is almost always going to end up with a percentage of a verdict against you. Always. So by putting that into dollars and cents, especially for your

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Paul Schmitz: Independent contractors what they hear is, Oh, crap. There’s a liability risk if I don’t have this on my record. Now, they may not go to the, you know, drink from the whole well and go, well, I love this training.

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Paul Schmitz: But they’re going to do it and they’re going to protect themselves because it’s all about, you know, making sure that you’re protected and making sure that you’re, you know, you’re taking care of.

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Paul Schmitz: So we really highly promote covering yourself protecting yourself and making sure you got the best awareness you possibly can and

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Paul Schmitz: since we switched our orientation over and started using this platform. It definitely is started to spread more out throughout the organization. And it’s so much easier now than it was before.

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Craig Hart: That’s what I try and tell people is that initially there will be pushed back there will be challenges when you implement orientation for the first time, because it’s new.

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Craig Hart: And not everyone embraces new things with the same willingness as others. But once it becomes a habit.

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Craig Hart: Safety can be habitual, safe training, safe thinking, safe behavior. These are all things that can be driven home repeatedly to the point where

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Craig Hart: I don’t want to use the word afterthought, but it becomes automatic. It becomes the way that people perform it becomes the expectation

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Craig Hart: And it sounds like you guys have definitely reached that part where it’s just this is how we operate period. This is what we do.

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Craig Hart: This is who we are and that’s great that’s powerful that’s the things that people can get behind. And I think you do a very good job, setting the table with this is the mission of why we’re doing this.

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Craig Hart: This is not just busy work. This is not just a checkbox on an insurance application. This is we want you to be safe in our vehicles. We want you to be safe for our clients for our companies for the general public.

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Craig Hart: And I don’t think it’s I think it’s awesome that you’re that upfront and forward about it. And this is our motivation comes from. And that’s, that’s great. I love that. I love it so

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Paul Schmitz: When you, when you look them straight in the eye and you’re giving them the reasons why you want them to do it.

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Paul Schmitz: You can see it and you ask them the question. Do you, do you understand where I’m coming from. With this and. Do you understand what I’m saying. And why I’m saying it.

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Paul Schmitz: And when they’re looking at you and they’re saying, Yeah, I get it, then you know that’s like that lightbulb moment when it goes off over their head. You’re like, yeah, there we go. Now we got it.

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Craig Hart: Excellent. Awesome, that’s great. Now I know this, the onboarding process here. I know this is a bit of a living, breathing organism here and this does get updated periodically. So this is obviously the not the same version that you and Leslie put together two and a half years ago, which

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Craig Hart: Than prod it over time.

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Craig Hart: Do you typically have a time frame that you’ve been Leslie go in. Oh, maybe I’ll ask me about this Leslie is there typically a time you reach out to Paul about, hey, we’ve taken a look at this. And while this this need to be freshened up?

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Leslie Smith: It’s not really a time frame on it, but at the beginning of the year. I had a conversation with him that we needed to revamp this and make some changes. So that’s where all this 30-60 day and the beginning orientation and the specific training went out.

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Leslie Smith: And we just kind of separated it out and change some groups up and revamp the whole program for him.

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Paul Schmitz: Awesome. Yeah, it was it. We just recently started doing this because of the feedback that we got. And, you know,

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Paul Schmitz: I had this program and I hired a training manager on and unfortunately we were all very overloaded. I had

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Paul Schmitz: My team wasn’t very big when I got here was just me and two people for 600 trucks. So I had to build out the team and I hired a guy on and, you know, great guy. Lots of

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Paul Schmitz: Education background and he was doing hiring and training at the same time. And I was so busy doing safety that when I turned it over to him. He really unfortunately was, you know, he was doing his best and

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Paul Schmitz: I think what happened was we just lost touch with it and I lost touch with Leslie and that was I didn’t realize the fact that it was going to have on the training program I my focus went away and

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Paul Schmitz: And so we reconnected again. And when I when I did. She’s

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Paul Schmitz: was kind of a, like a, oh my gosh, we’re in the heck have you been, like, Okay, so what’s going on with the training program. And when we looked at it. We’re like, okay.

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Paul Schmitz: And that’s when she said you need to do some revamping we need to do some work. It’s a thing organized, get it, you know, get it on track. We were doing online orientations, but it needed some defining really some well defining and she helped us to basically get that defined and

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Paul Schmitz: once she and I started connecting again. I was like, I, I realized how much of an asset that I was basically ignoring. I kicked my own, but for that one.

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Paul Schmitz: For she kicked my butt to several times she still does.

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Paul Schmitz: Like you just dropped me like hot

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Paul Schmitz: potato really?

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Paul Schmitz: The next thing you know, you know, we were on calls like we spent almost the whole day revamping this thing. I mean not physically a whole day but collectively a whole day of time.

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Paul Schmitz: Looking over this and you know it was just amazing how it came out and the effect that it had so I can you know thank her enough for being patient and waiting for me to get myself unbusy enough or pull my head up to get back on board.

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Craig Hart: That is a challenge. I mean, we know that

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Craig Hart: You will you have many masters that you have to report to and that

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Craig Hart: That our site our piece of it, the Infinit-I side is is not always a number one on the radar because

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Craig Hart: You’ve got people pulling you six different directions at any given time and i know

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Craig Hart: It’s a good thing that we have Leslie there to help back you up in a sense and I know that when we’ve framed

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Craig Hart: Client Success to other groups. We talked about them as being an extension of your company. And it’s basically an unpaid employee of Waynes.

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Craig Hart: Because her goal is to and function is to act on your best behalf to make sure that you get what you need out of system.

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Craig Hart: And and for some folks and like in this situation, it’s a very close relationship that you all have you talked frequently. I mean, Leslie, how often you guys talk once a week at least.

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Leslie Smith: Sometimes every day.

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Craig Hart: Sometimes every day. Okay, so

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Paul Schmitz: It may not be for very long. But we, yeah.

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Craig Hart: Excellent, excellent. So, that is, I’m not going to say for everyone on this call is listening that is the expectation that

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Craig Hart: You must implement for yourself. It works great for Paul and Leslie and if that works great for you. Awesome. We have Client Success reps to help with that. But I think the communication is absolutely essential and frequent too because I mean the needs of the business can change dramatically.

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Craig Hart: We can have instances of, you know, new clients that need additional training. I know with the Coronavirus.

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Craig Hart: We were putting out or generating content about that so that that you all could implement that out to your drivers, because there were so much uncharted territory, you know, how do you clean the cab of your truck,

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Craig Hart: if you can’t use a vacuum what what substances can you use to clean fabric and that don’t damage them and all sorts of other things and

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Craig Hart: To it. I mean, you just can’t go radio silent. I guess for three months, six months.

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Craig Hart: 12 months. God forbid that you’re not engaged. So I think that’s awesome. So, and and and Leslie does keep me abreast of any kind of conversations that you guys have. So I know how frequently you guys talk

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Paul Schmitz: Yeah, it’s um it’s interesting because sometimes you know either. I’ll call her or she’ll call me because there’s just one thing that I need to either an answer on and

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Paul Schmitz: I don’t know. Normally, you know, an email works, but I just like to hear her voice because usually what happens is, I’m in one of them moods. It’s something’s going on and she picks up the phone and it’s hello sunshine.

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Paul Schmitz: And I’m like, Okay, I’m feeling better now.

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Paul Schmitz: Alright, so once we got going on and it takes very little time on the phone and I know she’s busy and she

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Paul Schmitz: If she doesn’t care if she can’t pick up the phone, she calls me right back. You know I never worry about oh crap I got her voicemail, because I know she’s got a lot of clients just taking care of and it’s not just the Paul show. It’s not just me, you know,

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Paul Schmitz: Although I like to think that sometimes, right, Leslie.

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Leslie Smith: Absolutely.

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Paul Schmitz: You are being very quiet right now.

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Paul Schmitz: Normally, you’re giving me so much stuff.

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Paul Schmitz: And being nice.

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Craig Hart: Well, well, maybe this will help. So I know that with a 30-60 day in the orientation that sets the table and in a very good way for

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Craig Hart: ongoing training from that point forward, I mean, they cannot go through your 60 day orientation and come back and go

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Craig Hart: Well, I’ve never done that before because they just got done doing it for two months and the expectation, you set with them that this is going to be their reality.

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Craig Hart: So it dovetails very nicely in the ongoing training, which I know that you do with us as well as the the corrective action remedial piece that you take advantage of but

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Craig Hart: But with the ongoing training. You guys, I mean you do this monthly for your existing staff as well. And I know one of the questions that we typically get on these webinars, is how do you know

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Craig Hart: what to choose when you’re assigning monthly training and and how frequently do. How did you decide on doing it monthly versus quarterly?

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Paul Schmitz: Well, so one of the things that you look at as you look at you know the engagement.

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Paul Schmitz: If you spread it out too far, they lose that engagement. It’s not as it’s not as important. It’s not part of their routine. It’s not part of what they do. So the frequency

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Paul Schmitz: is important, I think I talked to Leslie about this. She says, Yeah, we have people doing it like every week, you know,

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Paul Schmitz: Small thing every week and I’m like, oh gosh, no. I don’t want to manage that.

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Paul Schmitz: So I was, I was a bit of a

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Paul Schmitz: scaredy cat when it, when it came to doing it quite that often. So the frequency was, you know, chosen to do you know just basically because of

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Paul Schmitz: freshness and as far as content goes now the content, you know, Infinit-I has just a huge catalogue of courses to choose from. So if you can’t find something to put out there, then you’re just not really looking

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Paul Schmitz: But at the same time. You don’t want to put something out there for, you know, winter driving when you’re in the heat of summer. So you obviously are looking at

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Paul Schmitz: What is relevant to the current situations, either within the fleet. The area. Sometimes we’ll look at

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Paul Schmitz: Changing up a video for one side of the fleet versus another because we have some Southern a couple of Southern terminals

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Paul Schmitz: And they’ll get into summer faster than we will and road construction faster than we will. So we may hit them with something

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Paul Schmitz: A little bit sooner, just to bring that road construction awareness or school back in session awareness, things like that.

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Paul Schmitz: We also look at what’s going on within the safety of feedback regarding you know our safety awareness programs.

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Paul Schmitz: Whether it’s speeding, whether it’s following distance if we start noticing some trends.

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Paul Schmitz: You know, will pump up the volume on the awareness of those topics. And it’s amazing the effect that it has YOU ALMOST SEE A an immediate nose dive in the frequency of incidents, you know, after a training so

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Paul Schmitz: And that’s the purpose of it right.

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Craig Hart: Yeah.

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Craig Hart: That means it’s working.

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Paul Schmitz: And

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Paul Schmitz: When you can see that working, then you know you got that validation and it also helps

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Paul Schmitz: When you’re trying to sell ownership on on these types of things in these programs is by being able to say, hey, we’ll look you know we just pumped up this thing on speed awareness and look at our speed scores. They dropped

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Paul Schmitz: Or, you know, we talked about following distance and are the videos for following too closely dropped so you know obviously there’s value there.

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Paul Schmitz: But that’s something that you’d have to be able to document and carry through but you know one of the other things that’s really interesting is

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Paul Schmitz: Is the and you mentioned, it was the reoccurring or remedial training for you know incidents or issues.

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Paul Schmitz: And Leslie is all over me about that one. I when I call her up and I say, oh, you wouldn’t believe it. We had a crash. This morning we actually did have a crash this morning, by the way, was

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Paul Schmitz: Fortunately, no one was hurt, you know it cleaned it up and everyone went on the way. But you know, it’s like, she’ll be like, okay, so what training, we’re assigning

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Paul Schmitz: She won’t even wait for me to tell her she’s like, okay, who was it. What do we got to do, let’s let’s get this taken care of didn’t get it taken care of, get it done. And so, yeah, she’s on this before I even think it most of the time.

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Craig Hart: I know she’s very forward thinking now, Leslie when when you’re helping him plan out as I know that you’re always very good with suggestions of recurring training.

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Craig Hart: What’s your process. What do you, what do you thinking about before you talk to Paul about a. These are the items we should get on his radar that are going to be valuable.

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Leslie Smith: I just try to think about what’s trending like you know the road site inspection things and he was talking about driving through work sense because when you know the weather gets nicer winter weather different things that are going around, you know, for all drivers in the world.

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Leslie Smith: I just try to tailor it to that as far as his corrective action for violations. If he tells me what happens and I throw out there. Okay.

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Leslie Smith: If you had someone that veered over into the other lane and had an accident, we need some changing lanes, possibly turning, if they’re following to close, some tailgating, throw some stuff out there like that.

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Craig Hart: Awesome, awesome, awesome. Now, now, we did have our marketing team Paul pull some screenshots, some of your custom content that you’ve put together.

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Craig Hart: And this is because I know that you, this is something that you take very seriously and you do spend time with it, you’re not necessarily

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Craig Hart: Shooting on 4K, 5K, HD here to get across what you need, but

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Craig Hart: I mean, there are things that are unique to Wayne that you need to train on that or things that your company, your trucks have

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Craig Hart: That you want to focus on. And so you’ll put a piece together and you put custom pieces together fairly frequently, and I know that

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Craig Hart: Probably quite a few folks on this call may be scared to death about getting in front of a camera to put something like this together. When you were first starting with custom content. I mean, how did you take that leap. What, what did you tell yourself.

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Paul Schmitz: Well, I’ve got a bit of an advantage, Craig. Oh, it’s kind of embarrassing, but I’m a ham. Okay, just

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Paul Schmitz: Just asked my wife asked anybody around me. I am a ham. So I don’t have a problem getting in front of people or talking. But for those who are a little less, shall we say that I have that type of a tendency.

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Paul Schmitz: Leslie can attest to this that I just talked too much.

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Leslie Smith: He’s right.

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Paul Schmitz: So,

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Paul Schmitz: With the My suggestion is where I don’t have a problem getting in front of the camera. I also did the ELD training that you see that slide on the right there. ELD training assigning a vehicle. That one was 100% just voice

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Paul Schmitz: over and then I had my training manager that has a great background in doing video editing and working with pieces and he really, he did it just on his desktop.

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Paul Schmitz: And he basically said, Okay, well, what do you want to say. So we basically all we did was we lined up the bullet points that we want created more or less the talking paper and

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Paul Schmitz: And then recorded the audio and then put the pictures to match the audio. It was pretty, pretty simple to do and and then for those that are a little bit shy about having a face on there. It’s just a voice.

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Paul Schmitz: We recorded that based on just off a little plug in microphone off of my laptop in my office. I mean we we did the whole thing in my office that one with the screen. That was our first ELD and I did that with my screen in my office.

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Paul Schmitz: I just had a video camera set up there and recorded it the whole time.

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Craig Hart: Excellent, yeah. For those of you on the call that have some trepidation about the custom content piece.

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Craig Hart: Paul made a great suggestion, doesn’t have to have your face on camera for it to be a custom content piece. We have instructions

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Craig Hart: that we can provide folks on how to do a voiceover PowerPoint basically animating a PowerPoint you put together that you narrate

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Craig Hart: So that it comes across as a video that you can then assign out for custom training. So if you need those

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Craig Hart: details please in the follow up from the webinar, please let us know. Because we can email those to you today. So you can start that process, but

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Craig Hart: I mean I think Paul will admit you know once you start doing these it gets easier with practice and frequency and they don’t have to be Oscar worthy to be useful.

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Craig Hart: As long as the information is valid and good and it’s not just something that someone asked is being read to by someone on the screen, it should be engaging enough for your folks.

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Paul Schmitz: Yeah it. A lot of that engagement comes from the excitement within yourself for the subject, you know, if you are truly love what you do. I mean, I love my job. I love what I do. There’s parts of it that are not as much fun.

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Paul Schmitz: But I love what I do and I love the drivers and I love the process that I go through to get to the through each one of those

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Paul Schmitz: So, you know, talking about ELD training. Some people got to find that absolutely horribly boring or, you know, just mundane or talking about different subjects.

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Paul Schmitz: But if you show your passion through your presentation. And don’t just read it the engagement will immediately pick up because they’ll hear it. I mean, there’s a demonstrating talking about somebody that has a voice that just never changes. And it fluctuation that oh yeah

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Craig Hart: droning voice.

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Paul Schmitz: The droning voice.

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Paul Schmitz: Is ELD training assigning a vehicle.

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Paul Schmitz: Welcome to ELD training, we’re going to talk about. Yeah, I mean there’s just so many things you can do, and have fun with it.

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Paul Schmitz: You know, like, like you said Craig, it doesn’t have to be Oscar worthy, but put your heart into it and have fun with it. You know your drivers of your drivers and everybody’s will appreciate that.

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Paul Schmitz: And when you put, you know, when you make it that way and personal. They know yeah and they’re gonna talk to ya about that video. Yeah, yeah. You sounded like you had a cold.

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Craig Hart: Awesome. Awesome. Well, I’ll take that screenshot of you off there. So,

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Craig Hart: Thanks, appreciate your time today. Paul and Leslie. Thank you so much.

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Craig Hart: Paul has very graciously allowed us to share his email so that if any of you have questions that were not able to answer on this call and we’re going to be handling that here in a second.

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Craig Hart: That you can reach out to him after the fact and he can follow up with you that’s is [email protected] but

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Craig Hart: If anyone does have questions for us. I think we had one come through here at least one come through here earlier. So do you have drivers sign required documents such as I9s and W2s remotely in the orientation process?

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Paul Schmitz: Yes, we do.

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Paul Schmitz: Can I mentioned, who we use

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Craig Hart: Sure absolutely

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Paul Schmitz: So we’re signed up with a company called 10th Street and they basically through them we send all of our documents directly to the driver they sign them electronically, either on their phone, a tablet, home computer

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Paul Schmitz: And it has changed the game tremendously because we see everything that comes back, we are so prepared for them when they hit our door. It has

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Paul Schmitz: It. I can’t even tell you how much time this has saved us by doing all our docs up front and we save a few of them for when they get here, but most everything assigned beforehand. Yeah.

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Craig Hart: Excellent, yeah. We work with 10th Street. 10th Street is actually a technology partner with us and we have some integrations that allow us to receive

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Craig Hart: new hire information to be uploaded into an organization so

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Craig Hart: I know that you don’t take advantage of this specifically Paul, but I know some organizations, when they have a new hire, it will automatically be added to their organization. And then they can actually view.

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Craig Hart: Their training with Infinit-I through the portal that 10 street provides. So that’s something that you want to find out more about please let us know because that

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Craig Hart: Is something that is we agree with all. I mean, it’s such a time saver, to be able to do that stuff online and to be able to track that information electronically because

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Craig Hart: Chasing paper is going away. That is going to be an extinct medium because you need to be able to find the records that are important at any time in the process. So,

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Craig Hart: God forbid you ever find yourself in court. You need to be able to access everything that you need to bring to a deposition electronically. You don’t want to have to be digging through a file cabinet.

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Craig Hart: To find out

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Craig Hart: What training, you’ve done, hire paperwork, drug screening paperwork, and all of those sorts of things.

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Paul Schmitz: So we had over 20 file cabinets. When I got here. We don’t have a single

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Paul Schmitz: one now.

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Craig Hart: Wow.

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Paul Schmitz: I was able to open up a space in the office and be able to get

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Paul Schmitz: More staff in, in place of those file cabinets, which I’m so happy to be able to see a person rather than those file cabinets.

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Craig Hart: I agree, I agree that would probably be pretty intimidating prospect to walk in the door and have to make sense of all of that.

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So,

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Craig Hart: Also wanted to remind people that, for those of you on the call that are not as familiar with Infinit-I and Vertical Alliance Group.

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Craig Hart: We do have a 30-day complimentary trial of our system that we are making available so that you can basically give us a test drive.

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Craig Hart: Get out crucial information in regards to the health crisis that your team members need to know

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Craig Hart: Do some safety training if there’s some specific challenges that you’re having right away. I know we have a blog post out about the spike in speeding tickets that has occurred, even though there are fewer

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Craig Hart: Excuse me, fewer civilian vehicles on the road. There are more speeding tickets now because

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Craig Hart: That means is just trucks that are being targeted by state troopers. So speeding,

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Craig Hart: distracted driving training I know is it’s an absolute monster out there right now and one of the leading causes of accidents. These are all things that you can

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Craig Hart: Start to implement in that complimentary trial to see how that can be impactful for your organization. So if you’d like more details about that, please call us at that phone number.

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Craig Hart: On the screen there. The 972-232-7305 and we love to talk with you more.

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Craig Hart: But other than that, Paul. Again, I appreciate your time so much. Thank you for joining us. I think you’ve shared a lot of great information today.

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Craig Hart: I’ve been taking notes, even though I had all my stuff prepared in advance. I’ve been writing things down, Leslie. As always a pleasure to work with you. Oh, I think we got another question here that came in here at the last minute, let me just make sure we get that answered.

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Craig Hart: Q&A I know I have drivers that feel like training is a burden on them with everything else, they are required to do such as keeping up with logs, keeping up with turning in DoLS,

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Craig Hart: and fuel receipts and everything else. When you first started pushing training that often, as in monthly. Did you have any driver pushback?

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Paul Schmitz: I didn’t experience the driver pushback, you know, not in a large way. I mean, I think I heard, maybe a couple of drivers, you know, like, okay, we’re doing this, you know, instead of quarterly what’s going on. I’m like,

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Paul Schmitz: Again, you give them the why you give them the reason why, and you don’t kill them with you know 15-20 minutes every single month. It doesn’t take much to bring that awareness back around, all it takes is just a reminder

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Paul Schmitz: of what it is you want them to be aware of. And, you know, if you give them the why.

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Paul Schmitz: Typically that’s all you have to do is you give them the why. And yeah, I get it. They’re just like, Oh, I’ve got to do this. Now I got to do that.

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Paul Schmitz: You know, the percentage of drivers that are in that boat.

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Paul Schmitz: Or not that big.

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Craig Hart: Yeah, and it’s dwindling dwindling is more organizations are realizing they have to have something in place to remain in viable as a

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Craig Hart: business.

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Paul Schmitz: And if a driver comes to me and he puts a threat out there says, Well, if you’re going to require all this. I’m just going to go find a company that doesn’t. I say, Well, I hate to see you go, I hate to see you give up.

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Paul Schmitz: What we have here. And what you have here because of five minutes or 10 minutes where the training, but if that’s your decision. I’m not going to stop you, because this is so important.

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Paul Schmitz: And they look at me and I’m like, you know, I don’t want to see you go, but if that’s your reason that’s your decision. You know, I wish you the best. Have a nice day.

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Paul Schmitz: I’m not gonna argue with him.

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Sure.

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Paul Schmitz: Yeah, and some people like you can’t do that. You lose a driver. I’m like, No, I’m losing somebody that doesn’t see what we’re doing here. It doesn’t get it.

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Craig Hart: Yeah, so

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Craig Hart: I think that gets lost in the shuffle some time of the numbers of trying to keep people on board and keep people driving is that

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Craig Hart: There’s liability involved with everyone that you bring on board. And if you have someone that’s not willing to help control that and improve that. That’s additional risk that you’re taking on

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Paul Schmitz: And, you know,

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Paul Schmitz: Yeah, it definitely definitely is you know at some of the other things that we’re working on this year is getting our ownership and leadership involved, you know, VP of operations.

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Paul Schmitz: General Manager, looking at doing some just quick spots highlighting them in a video and then putting those out as just general information videos for anybody.

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Paul Schmitz: To watch and getting those assigned out there so it helps in larger companies like ours, where we’ve grown

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Paul Schmitz: You, you get so far away from those people that helped get you there. And this is just another opportunity and such an easy way to keep that face out there and keep the contact going

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Paul Schmitz: And then solicit you know feedback and questions from the driver so many people just lose that edge. And you know, I think that’s when they start going the other direction and not the good way.

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Craig Hart: Yeah, I hear you know people want to work with people. So making sure that they’re reminded of who’s part of their company is absolutely essential, but it looks like we are up for our time today. So I appreciate everyone joining us

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Paul Schmitz: Thanks. Great.

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Craig Hart: Again, if any follow up, please let us know Paul, thank you again, Leslie. Thank you again and

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Craig Hart: We will see you folks next time.

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Paul Schmitz: Thanks.