Understanding the relationship between recruiting and retention is most easily understood if you visualize a funnel. The large end of the funnel represents your recruiting program; the small end represents your retention program.

It’s the job of the recruiting program to keep their end of the funnel opened large enough to provide a sufficient flow of new drivers into the organization. It’s the job of the retention program to restrict the flow of drivers leaving the organization.

Understanding the relationship between the two ends of the funnel is important. The relationship is this: on the large end of the funnel, increasing capitol and resources into your recruiting program does not improve retention performance.

Unfortunately, that’s what a lot of carriers do. When they become short of drivers, they throw a lot of money into their recruiting efforts in hopes of increasing the flow of applicants into the company.

On the other end of the funnel, it’s a different story. Investing capitol and resources into your retention program can have a significant impact on your recruiting efforts. The more effective you are in restricting the flow of drivers from the company, the less capitol and resources you need for recruiting.

Yes, because the benefits between the two programs are significant. Virtually every company today has a funded and structured recruiting program. Ask the CEOs of those companies who in their organization is accountable for recruiting, what their budget is and what activities they perform; and you’ll get some pretty definitive answers. Yet ask those same CEOs who in their company are responsible for retention, what their budget is and what their activities are, and often you’ll get vague to no answers at all. Most companies don’t have fully defined and funded retention programs.

Pretty soon it’s going to be a critical success factor for all trucking companies to have a formal and effective retention program. A recent industry study forecast that by the year 2014, we’re going to experience an extreme driver labor shortage. There’s no solution for that shortage; we can’t stop baby boomers from retiring.

What that means is there aren’t enough new entrants joining the driver workforce to cover demand; so carriers are going to be forced to go after the only other source of driver labor there is – other carrier’s drivers. That means the real battleground for driver labor is going to shift from recruiting to retention.