SKILLED AND HIGHLY EFFICIENT WORKFORCE

The employees of all businesses not excluding those operating in the haulage services industry play vital and indisputable important roles in the delivery of the goals and ideals of the business. They constitute the main asset and therefore investing in creating capacity through appropriate training and skill development programmes which will facilitate an improvement in efficiency and overall performance would appear to be a most reasonable path to follow. Training and skill development action plans aside increasing staff retention also assist in swift comprehension of changing technologies and processes.

Performance assessment across board should enhance the development of an all-encompassing training plan for all staff with more emphasis placed on matching training needs against identified areas of lapses or under-performance. If carried out appropriately, this can encourage staff to become more efficient in their everyday activities. This process will not only identify weaknesses that can then be improved upon, but also raise the standard of employees. At the end, the business will benefit and employees will feel more fulfilled and be more likely to stay longer and work harder.

 

Training plans for Drivers and Fleet Management Operations Staff should be designed to address three key skill areas:

Technical Skills: Defensive, safe and fuel efficient driving, Telematics and Computer skills, driver checklists and maintenance skills.

Personal Skills: General administration, customer care, communication both internal and external and team work.

Knowledge acquisition: Knowledge of the vehicle, Road traffic and transport regulations and management of environmentally hazardous clients’ goods.

 

Furthermore, if the haulage firm must sustain the impact of its training and skill development programmes, standard for continuous evaluation and assessment of gap areas has to be in place. A good method of achieving this for drivers and operational staff is to create what is called league tables. Functional and well developed league tables will measure performance in several different areas such as fuel efficiency, number of accidents, delays by road traffic authorities, product damage, on-time deliveries and communication flops. This will also foster a healthy competitive atmosphere within the organization as earlier stated. In doing this however, care must be taken to ensure that staff (drivers most especially) do not become de-motivated as a result of performance being measured. Instead, performance evaluation must take on a
positive and proactive nature, where training is given to improve overall performance and enhance the employee’s skills. Once weaknesses in employees’ skills have been identified, measures can then be taken to rectify the problems. 

Understanding new technology can maximize efficiency and performance and it is important that managers and administration staff are computer literate. It is also important that all administration staff and managers understand the concept of performance management so that they can correctly collect information that can help improve the Company’s operation. If the information is collected correctly, then problems can be identified and tackled quickly.

Communication and proper understanding of key processes and their connectivity are key skills in the success performance of any logistics company. Managers should be able to effectively communicate instructions to team members and likewise administration staff should be able to appropriately ‘actionize’ and communicate vital information to the drivers and operational staff.

 

Closing Remarks

From the foregoing, it is obvious that understanding, monitoring and enhancing performance can be very challenging. By the same token and considering the environment in which businesses operate in Nigeria, upscaling operational haulage operational efficiency from a mediocre level to a position of excellence can be very daunting but definitely not impossible. What this paper has done is to equip every haulage practitioner (most especially the decision makers) with good understanding of industry-specific performance management concepts, advice on way and means of putting them into everyday operational practice and offer a range of initiatives which can be introduced to improve overall operational performance.

 

It is our hope in Haulage Report Now that these nuggets of information would assist some companies if not all in adding tangible value to their business because that is why we are in business.

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