Hire Truckers Podcast

00:00 - 00:09
GInger W. Craddock: Welcome to the Hire Truckers podcast, the show for fleet executives, HR leaders, and recruiting professionals. I'm your host, Ginger Craddock.

00:09 - 00:32
Aaron Craddock: And I'm your host, Aaron Craddock. Each week, we share actionable insights, market trends, and proven strategies to help you grow and thrive. Welcome to the Hire Truckers podcast. I'm your host, Aaron Craddock, and today we have Ginger on again. So as you guys know, you know her most, well for her role as a director of client success at TruckingClicks.

00:32 - 00:54
Aaron Craddock: And today, we have her on more in her master team building role. And so one of the things that Ginger is an expert in is building teams and, like, putting people in the right spots. Specifically, she's a Colby certified team consultant. And so some of the stuff we're going to dive in today is about fitting people in the right roles. So welcome to the show, Ginger.

00:54 - 01:04
GInger W. Craddock: Thank you, Aaron. I'm I'm really looking forward to this conversation because I'm passionate about people and teams. So thank you for allowing space for this conversation today.

01:04 - 01:27
Aaron Craddock: Awesome. Thank you for your time. So as as a little intro, so welcome to the Hire Truckers podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by our newsletter, Hire Truckers Fleet Fit, your biweekly resource for actionable strategies, insights, and proven methods to optimize your fleet for peak performance. So some of this is something Ginger launched late November.

01:27 - 02:02
Aaron Craddock: We already have 390 subscribers. And so this is this message that we're talking about today, fitting people in the right seats and optimizing performance is something just that's already really resonating with the industry even though we we don't have the first newsletter out yet. I think when this show launches, the first one will will already be released. But if you haven't subscribed yet, what I did earlier is I searched for a hashtag fleet fit on LinkedIn, and I was able to easily find it. And again, and thank you for of our audience, the 400 or so people that are already subscribed prelaunch.

02:03 - 02:23
Aaron Craddock: Today, we are diving into how aligning your drivers and support teams with roles that match their natural strengths can boost productivity, reduce turnover, and keep your fleet energized. So again, Ginger, I wish thank you for joining us today, and I'm excited about this quest to help fleets fit drivers in the right seats.

02:24 - 02:26
GInger W. Craddock: Agreed. Thank you, Erin. Let's dig in.

02:27 - 02:32
Aaron Craddock: So what does it mean to maximize a fleet's potential through talent alignment?

02:34 - 03:09
GInger W. Craddock: First, it's about matching team members to the roles that fit their natural strengths. So there's a report out called the Workplace Reality Check 2025 study that Colby Corp did, and here's a mind blowing statistic. We found that forty two percent of workers lose roughly one full day per year working against their strengths. So aligning work to natural talent, it's crucial that we recover this lost productivity.

03:10 - 03:24
Aaron Craddock: That's interesting. And I have heard that just in the industry in general. And so specific to trucking, because we know they did that general report, but why is this critical to trucking, driver recruiting, support teams, things like that?

03:25 - 03:48
GInger W. Craddock: Thank you for that question. It it's really key because in trucking, misalignment, it drives stress, burnout, and turnover. So the question I would ask our audience is look at yourself first and then look at your team. Are you seeing team members or yourself? Are you experiencing stress, burnout?

03:48 - 04:17
GInger W. Craddock: Are you seeing higher turnover rates than you'd like? Well, what we know from this report, and again, we are data people at Trucking Clicks. So this report shows that sixty percent of employees lack energy for life outside of work. That breaks my heart because think about all the important things. Our work is important, but think about all the important things that we are responsible for outside of work.

04:17 - 04:47
GInger W. Craddock: And to have 60% of employees lack energy for life outside of work, that's heartbreaking to me. And also nearly 38% are considering leaving due to misfit work, And that's even when pay is competitive. So for fleets, that's higher cost, reduced retention, and operational inefficiencies. And good news is we can fix these things.

04:48 - 05:28
Aaron Craddock: Yeah. So I first got exposed to just the Colby training and assessment and stuff just through you a number of years ago when we implemented it at our company. And yeah, it's just been mind blowing. I was part of that 60% that you just talked about most days when I got home, didn't show up the way I wanted to for my family and just didn't have energy. And now that our team operates kind of under this framework framework where I know I need to do more fact finding and then adapt and and then leverage my quick start, just those different terms help me a lot and help me dialogue with the team.

05:28 - 05:49
Aaron Craddock: And then I have more energy now just during the day and can work long days and and still feel energy. So I've appreciated this. But one of the words in Colby that was new to me is conative. And so what are conative strengths and why should fleet leaders care about that word?

05:50 - 06:23
GInger W. Craddock: In a nutshell, conative strengths describe how people take action naturally when they can do it according to their natural instinct. And this is how people gather information. It's how we take risk. It's how we structure processes or how we work hands on. So when workers are aligned with their instincts, they're more productive, they're energized, and they're engaged.

06:23 - 06:54
GInger W. Craddock: And so what I like to ask people is can you think of a time when you were working and you lost track of time and you were just working, working, working? Well, you were working according to your natural conative strengths, and these are innate instincts that are in us from the beginning of our life. And, again, the data shows this insight. This is not theory. It's data driven insights into how we do our best work.

06:54 - 07:23
GInger W. Craddock: And so I love that. And I want more of that work that's in that sweet spot. And so I wonder in our audience, do you want more work where you feel that flow? These are tools that help us get ourselves there individually and help us align our teams and design teams to be more in that flow state, that natural productive place where work is a real pleasure and we do our best.

07:24 - 07:37
Aaron Craddock: Yeah. One of the of the topics that comes up in recruiting a lot is retention. What I wonder as we were prepping prepping for this is how does alignment and this type of thing affect retention and trucking specifically?

07:38 - 08:21
GInger W. Craddock: I touched on that that being in the flow and what that feels like. Well, here's what the data shows us. Employees who rarely experience that flow, that that conative effect that we're talking about, they are four times more likely to be job hunting. So in trucking, think about your current drivers, think about your current safety team, think about your HR team, think about the different teams that make up your fleet's organization. Employees who rarely experience that flow are four times more likely to be job hunting.

08:22 - 08:34
GInger W. Craddock: And so by aligning tasks with natural strengths, we can dramatically reduce turnover risk and improve retention in trucking across departments.

08:36 - 08:51
Aaron Craddock: Yeah. Yeah. Burnout, as you know, we've been in a freight recession for a few years now, the longest one ever. And burnout is a major challenge. So with that, like thinking about burnout in the context of these different teams, how does alignment help?

08:54 - 09:13
GInger W. Craddock: This blew my mind. And when I when I learned this, I realized, oh, that explains what I have felt oftentimes. Misaligned employees experience chronic stress. Let that sink in. Chronic stress.

09:13 - 09:57
GInger W. Craddock: Thirty eight percent report unsustainable levels of stress. And when we work in alignment, what we know is that nearly doubles energy retention and it reduces stress. So this is making burnout far less likely when we can make incremental progress and see this improvement in job fit, doing jobs in the way that fit our natural instincts. That's incredible to me. We literally have tools to make people's lives better, and like you said, you and I have experienced it firsthand.

09:57 - 10:36
GInger W. Craddock: And here I'd like to share, we're not all the way there. We haven't achieved that. We still work under stress and things like that, but we have found that this has given us tools to communicate within our team, to communicate with one another, then to align our team according to what we know their naturalist strengths are, and then also offer support when we all have to work from time to time outside of our strengths. But we want to reduce that as much as we can because we don't want to be the source of that chronic stress and just how debilitating we know chronic stress can be.

10:38 - 11:17
Aaron Craddock: Yeah, I was actually going touch on that, that we've been implementing this for years and still have a long way to go. Some of it is like you can't perfectly be in all of your strengths or or a perfect fit, especially when you're a smaller team like we are. Just where we're all wearing multiple hats at our organization and, yeah, and just owning different responsibilities. And so we're not, yeah, no one ever is gonna be in a perfect flow state, perfectly allocate their time according to this. And I do know that I can now, yeah, just work work crazy hours in a week, but still have energy when I get home.

11:17 - 11:44
Aaron Craddock: Back to some of those earlier points. So you talked about task fit. And so to to expound more on that, how important is task fit compared to compensation? Because we've had some guests on that have talked about, you know, compensation and retention and different things as far as from the director of recruiting perspective. But just holistically, like, what's some data around task fit versus compensation?

11:46 - 12:39
GInger W. Craddock: Well, like you said, we will hear money, money, money, compensation, compensation. But what we know is there are other drivers and metrics that help with retention. And so this next data point, it shows us that task fit actually rivals compensation when it comes to retaining an employee. So 40% of workers, 40% rank doing work aligned with their strengths as a top satisfaction driver. So in trucking, if we're matching assignments to strengths, that's gonna help us retain our drivers, retain our support staff even when pay alone isn't the differentiator.

12:39 - 13:07
GInger W. Craddock: How many executives, how many leaders do you know that are looking for ways to maximize productivity, improve retention, and they need other levers besides just the pay, especially in a challenging market. These are some key drivers that can really help when you realize 40% rank this alignment as their number one satisfaction driver. That's incredible.

13:08 - 13:14
Aaron Craddock: So more along that, how does strengths based work design improve fleet outcomes?

13:16 - 13:53
GInger W. Craddock: So here's what we know. I'm throwing a lot of numbers at you, but like, I'm a fact finder and sometimes my facts will my my need to know facts will make my team glaze over and they'll go and I'll I'll have to remind them, you you guys tell me when to stop with the facts. But in this case, what I want the audience to know is when work aligns with strengths, see what you think about these numbers. Flow state doubles from 26% to 50%. Energy retention doubles from 24 to 50%.

13:53 - 14:14
GInger W. Craddock: Aaron kinda touched on that. When he began to work in his strengths, he sees that his energy and his productivity goes up. Your your teams will literally your individuals will see the difference when you begin to make these individual quick tweaks. But wait for this third one. It's mind blowing because we're talking about retention as well.

14:15 - 14:49
GInger W. Craddock: Job hunting consideration drops a whopping 70% when you can make this alignment with how people do their best work. That, my friends, we don't know what the upcoming year is going to mean with trucking. We know looking back, it's been harder than we expected. The looking forward is unknown. But if you can address these issues with these tools, this is how fleets become more productive, reliable, and engaged.

14:49 - 14:53
GInger W. Craddock: And ultimately, you see those results on your bottom line.

14:54 - 15:15
Aaron Craddock: So when we were discussing this morning some different things, around the podcast and an event we have coming up for the team, You mentioned the alignment gap and kind of shared some info around that, specifically what we were talking about. How can leaders so first of all, what is the alignment gap? And then how can leaders fix it?

15:16 - 15:57
GInger W. Craddock: So when you're looking at your team and you're looking at the alignment gap, the alignment gap is the growing distance between how people naturally take action instinctively and how their jobs actually require them to work each day. And as that gap becomes large enough, it begins to function like a hidden tax on productivity, on energy, and on retention. Like, it's a zapper. Like, you can it's an energy zapper. It's a cognitive zapper to your creativity, and so you see how you could kinda see where that chronic stress comes from.

15:58 - 16:48
GInger W. Craddock: And so the data shows that the alignment gap is structural, not motivational. So it's not that your people lack heart or lack motivation, it's a gap that's structural that we can address in a way that improves results, improves team experience and individual experience. And so three key data points that I've mentioned are forty two percent of workers lose roughly one full workday each week working against their natural strength. So I wanna ask the listener, I wanna ask you, what would you do if you got one full workday back each week? How would you use that time?

16:48 - 17:34
GInger W. Craddock: What would that mean to the quality of your life? Next, sixty percent of people, workers, they end the workday without enough energy for their personal life. And again, I'm gonna say like I did earlier, that breaks my heart because at home are really the people that matter the most to us, and I care about people. I love people, and I want them to have that energy at the end of their day to do the things that they dream of personally and to invest in their family, you know, the ones that mean the most to them and their friend relationships. And then finally, thirty eight percent report that their stress level is not sustainable long term.

17:34 - 18:38
GInger W. Craddock: So what leaders can do to close this alignment gap is leaders can provide flexibility, strength based task assignments, and manager awareness. These are all three things that we have applied within our organization, flexibility, strength based task assignments, and manager awareness. Like Erin said, as a small team, sometimes we can't fix it and we've got to work outside of our strengths, but just the awareness, not only I would say of the managers, but us as an internal team with each other, we've got language to say, hey, I need a little space or who's better aligned for this task or this was really draining, but I got it done. And so it fosters empathy and understanding and clear communication. So I would say to leaders, embed alignment into your team design and performance metrics to reduce turnover and improve productivity.

18:39 - 18:50
Aaron Craddock: Now a quick note from our sponsor. Hiring CDL drivers isn't about more leads. It's about better ones. That's why Sirius carriers partner with Hire Truckers by Trucking Clicks. We don't sell ads.

18:50 - 19:16
Aaron Craddock: We bring clear strategy, straight talk, and a relentless focus on quality drivers. Even in a tough market, our clients see improved performance month over month by optimizing smarter and making every hiring dollar work harder. For honest insights, sharper targeting, and results you can trust, visit truckingclicks.com or call (512) 982-0816. Hire truckers by Trucking Clicks. Clarity, courage, results.

19:16 - 19:33
Aaron Craddock: That sounds great, but also at the same time a little complicated because it's like, what is conative? How do we do this? And so thinking they're just tactical, I like to get to just tactics, kind of like with our marketing campaigns. What's the first step, for fleets looking to improve alignment?

19:35 - 20:11
GInger W. Craddock: So start with the COLBE assessment. There's something called a COLBE A, and that lets individual team members first understand a little bit more about themselves, understand how they do their best work. It helps them see themselves. So I'd start with the COLB a assessment, and then there's other assessments that help with team design, team fit, etcetera. So then what we can do is we can redesign roles and responsibilities to match the natural strengths of our individual team members.

20:11 - 20:45
GInger W. Craddock: And what we know is that small changes yield immediate results in engagement, flow, and retention. I'm not saying change everything. I'm just saying it gives insights of where we can make individual tweaks to improve experience. And it's incremental improvements over time both in communication and in job fit, job alignment. We hear a lot in retention about it's the culture that retains people.

20:46 - 20:58
GInger W. Craddock: Well, this helps root culture and conversations in a really healthy way based on data and science that proves itself out right out of the gate step by step.

20:59 - 21:16
Aaron Craddock: So we mentioned the newsletter at the beginning. So first of all, how can people follow the newsletter? Because helping people fit obviously is going to really help a lot of fleets both culturally and help the bottom line. So where can people find your newsletter or follow it?

21:17 - 21:41
GInger W. Craddock: Thank you for asking, Aaron. One of the things that you said when you started Hire Truckers is that you wanted to add value and improve the overall industry. And so the Hire Truckers Fleet Fit newsletter is available on LinkedIn. You can find it by searching Hire Truckers Fleet Fit. You can find that newsletter and, subscribe to it.

21:42 - 22:52
GInger W. Craddock: But before you subscribe to it, I wanna let you know what's available there so you can evaluate and, you you know, your time is valuable and you don't have extra time. But if you see that you want tips for aligning your drivers, dispatchers, and support staff, if you need solutions for turnover, burnout, and underperformance, if you are looking for data driven strategies to keep your teams energized and engaged, that's who the Fleet Fit newsletter is for, individuals who are looking for any of those pieces. And that's our way of using our data insights, our experience to continue to lean in and add value and support and just raise the experience level. I I think everybody should be in trucking because I love the people in trucking and their solutions mindset. But listen, it's gritty, it's challenging, and we are required to really persevere and problem solve.

22:52 - 23:04
GInger W. Craddock: And so if you already have those skills and you're passionate about that and you're in trucking and you want to continue to level up in those areas, I encourage you to join our tribe and join the newsletter.

23:05 - 23:26
Aaron Craddock: Awesome. Yeah. I found it most easily by searching for hashtag fleet fit this morning when I was looking at it. Just as another option, and we'll put all this in the we're gonna put all these stats that we have, this data, and the the notes, the show notes, whether you're on YouTube, Spotify, wherever you're watching this or listening. Yeah.

23:26 - 23:34
Aaron Craddock: So next, we we touched about how the newsletter can help. Yeah. What what is your what's your final advice for fleet leaders?

23:35 - 24:32
GInger W. Craddock: Alignment is a strategic advantage. In a competitive market, every fleet executive, every director of recruiting, every VP level that I know, they're looking for strategic advantages. And there's a lot of chatter about a lot of things in the industry and that are changing in the world that could potentially give a fleet a strategic advantage? Well, alignment is the strategic advantage that will help fleets match tasks to strengths and a more productive team. It will help you retain employees longer, and it will help you operate with higher energy and efficiency.

24:33 - 24:40
GInger W. Craddock: So my final advice to leaders, alignment is a strategic advantage to you and your team.

24:42 - 25:13
Aaron Craddock: Wow. What a great place to end. So thank you so much, just everyone listening for joining us the last two years as we enter our third year of the Hire Truckers podcast. Just specifically for practical insights and strategies to help your fleet operate at peak performance, subscribe to our newsletter, Hire Truckers Fleet Fit. You'll get actionable tips, data driven insights, and expert advice to ensure your fleet stays productive, engaged, and ready for the long haul.

25:13 - 25:19
Aaron Craddock: Have a great week, and until next time. I'm Erin, helping you turn your fleet strategy into real results.

25:19 - 25:27
GInger W. Craddock: Thank you for listening to the Hire Truckers podcast, the show for fleet executives, HR leaders, and recruiting professionals. I'm your host, Ginger Craddock.

25:28 - 25:40
Aaron Craddock: And I'm your host, Aaron Kradoch. Each week, we share insights, trends, and strategies to help you grow and thrive. If you found value today, please share the show and leave a review. Until next time, keep building top performing teams.