Fleet Winter Webinar Series 2022 Wrap-up
by Ken Goldberg, Consultant, IPWEA Fleet
The Fleet Winter Webinar Series for 2022 has finished but is not forgotten. IPWEA Fleet’s themed webinar series had a terrific line-up of speakers over 4 sessions to deal with the very challenging and real issue of managing fleet in a tight labour market. The fleet community is absolutely facing this now and the sessions provided practical, well-thought through information to webinar attendees. Below is a summary of the key takeaways across the series.
The first session was on branding and marketing to attract a broader fleet workforce demographic. The speaker, Michelle Fragar of BRANDiT Marketing, discussed ‘Employer of choice” marketing and using branding and brand archetypes to reposition the organisation in the marketplace.
Michelle’s key message was for fleet practitioners to consider attracting potential workforce talent across a wider range of sectors by developing an emotional connection with fleet candidates using a range of techniques. This included:
1. Flexible working arrangements and RDOs
2. Community volunteering
3. Mental health support and performance coaching
4. Paid parental leave, and
5. KPIs linked to employee benefits.
The second session saw Anne-Maree Coyne from Modus Management go much deeper into the concept of flexible working arrangements to attract and retain fleet staff.
Anne-Maree split the interactive talk into 2 parts. She first defined flexible work in fleet management relating to hours, patterns, location, trends, legislative rights, disputes, and employee requests to name a few. She then looked at how to use flexible work such as job sharing/splitting to appeal to job applicants while maintaining existing staff.
Anne-Maree’s key takeaways to raise awareness on flexible work options includes:
1. Reviewing general and specific work policies and procedures
2. Applying flexibility to job vacancies and rework roles and ads to suit
3. Increasing communication and transparency around splitting/sharing roles
4. Incorporating manager and staff training, and
5. Combining rigour, accountability, and continuous improvement
The third session shifted gears with Steven Colliver from Dubbo Regional Council and Steve Croxon from Griffith City Council presenting alternative resourcing strategies from a fleet manager’s perspective. They have both been dealing with staffing difficulties mainly around the identification and hiring of qualified mechanics and presented different approaches to deal with the ongoing challenge.
Steven Colliver shared his experience with contingency planning in relation to the recruitment process, third party agreements, reviewing roles, mobilising mechanics to provide infield servicing, and having a strong QA process. His key takeaways to fleet practitioners were:
1. Know the capabilities of your business
2. Have a strong planning process and annual review
3. Test the recruitment market
4. Communicate the issues to staff and request feedback
5. Build a strong and resilient QA process
6. Monitor the progress and don’t be afraid to change
Steve Croxon on the other hand has taken a different approach to deal with the shortage of mechanics. This is mainly due to identifying that organisations in certain geographical locations reveal shortcomings in a tight labour market. Steve argued that the need to travel long distances to receive some important services dissuades talent from applying for jobs in his local area due to competitive options for job applicants without the same drawbacks.
To fill the gap, Steve introduced the concept of acquiring employee skilled mechanics from overseas and shared basic requirements to recruit skilled migrants. These include:
1. Becoming a Business Sponsor to sponsor an overseas worker
2. Budgeting for a range of one-off costs per applicant including sourcing, screening, visa nomination, visa applications, facilitating skills assessments and worker departure requirements
3. Budgeting for a training levy paid to the Australian Government
4. Budgeting for flights from overseas locations
5. Assisting skilled migrants to apply for permanent residency
6. Paying migrant workers, the same as an Australian resident
In the final session, Jill Arkell from The Ripple Effect Teams, presented various models to build a collaborative and engaged fleet workplace to retain staff. Jill discussed staff engagement, loyalty, the engagement mix, culture, performance management, and reward & recognition to name a few.
Jill’s practical tips for fleet practitioners to build engagement included:
1. Make work meaningful by connecting purpose statements to employee values
2. Link employees everyday work to achieving purpose and realising their values
3. Create belonging by encouraging voluntary groups that connect over commonality
4. Get to know your people and build genuine relationships that demonstrate care
5. Collaboratively explore what would make work less stressful and more enjoyable
6. Give your people more autonomy, and
7. Use feedback to help employees find out what they’re good at
All in all, the Fleet Winter Webinar Series 2022 was thought-provoking and provided useful Q&A, comments, and practical takeaways.
Please contact Ken Goldberg if you have any further questions about Fleet Winter Webinar Series 2022 or if you have a topic you would like to be considered for the 2023 webinar series.