Employee retention has long been a major challenge for the transportation and logistics industry. And amid the COVID-19 pandemic, these retention challenges are only getting worse—exacerbated by continued economic uncertainty, supply-chain bottlenecks, and intermittent business shutdowns. In the trucking industry, for example, nearly one out of every 20 new drivers will not stay past the first week on the job, according to a Stay Metrics analysis from 2021—and that’s actually a relative low compared to the prior year. The transportation and logistics industry will always be impacted by forces outside its control. But at the same time, companies need to be doing everything they can within their control to be seen as attractive places to work.
ServiceNow's Single System of Action
One of the most strategically important things that transportation and logistics companies can do to attract and retain employees is to invest in technology. Younger generations of employees expect that the technology-driven conveniences and services they enjoy in their personal lives will extend to the workplace. They are frustrated by inefficient legacy workflows, and turned off by clunky, outdated systems and software. As much as transportation and logistics companies may be committed to seeing these technologies get upgraded, many companies are stymied because they don’t know how to effectively implement technology to achieve digital transformation. That’s where the concept of a single system of action becomes so critical for transportation and logistics companies to understand. Centralization and unification of work and data are at the heart of how companies invest strategically and optimally in digital transformation. Until all systems and workflows are unified under a single system of action, it matters little what other technology investments a company might make. Let’s explore three key reasons why transportation and logistics employees look for—expect to find—a single system of action in their workplace:
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Employees get frustrated by siloed, disconnected systems
When workflows are spread across multiple systems, employees must log into and toggle between all those systems to access the information they need and get work done. Even for common employee-related services like HR, payroll, and IT, employees don’t want to be forced to access multiple systems to get what they need. It’s time-consuming, frustrating, and prone to introducing unnecessary human error. With a company invests in a single system of action, all of these apps and services and systems get consolidated, and all data emanates from a single source of truth. It’s efficient, it’s reliable, and it’s a work environment that every employee is drawn to and appreciates.
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Employees expect access to consumer-grade experiences
Transportation and logistics employees often feel like widgets—anonymous, under-appreciated, and easily replaceable. These attitudes are exacerbated when the employer doesn’t have infrastructure in place to provide a smooth onboarding experience, or to support and engage employees over time by doing outreach and offering professional development opportunities. And even when transportation and logistics companies make investments in employee onboarding and outreach, these investments largely fall flat until the company invests in a single system of action and creates consumer-grade experiences. With a single system of action, companies are able to collect, store, and analyze all relevant employee data in one place, then use the data to create elegant, best-in-class employee experiences. A single system of action is essential to creating the consistently high-quality, intelligent workplace experiences that employees want and expect.
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Employees don't want to depend on institutional knowledge
When employees start a new job, they don’t want to jump through hoops to figure out how to do their job. They expect clear, comprehensive documentation, and they want access to searchable, self-service knowledge bases to answer all of their questions. Unfortunately, in the transportation and logistics industry, much of this knowledge still lives inside the heads of their older, experienced counterparts—a particularly problematic shortcoming given the industry’s high turnover rates and increasing reliance on outsourcing. The end result is that knowledge routinely gets transmitted incorrectly, inconsistently, and incompletely, and root-cause analyses get completed without the benefit of access to all the necessary information. It is only by creating a single system of action that a company gains the infrastructure necessary to build comprehensive, centralized knowledge bases. A single system of action is the only viable way to centralize and preserve institutional and tribal knowledge, as well as to make this knowledge consistently and widely accessible to every employee who needs it.
Enable Employees with a Single System of Action from ServiceNow
Every year, it’s becoming a bigger imperative for transportation and logistics companies to invest in a single system of action—to digitally transform, to eliminate inefficiencies, and to become attractive places where employees want to work. It’s easy to understand why younger generations of employees expect a single system of action: They get frustrated by multiple siloed, disconnected systems, they expect access to consumer-grade experiences that engage them and engender their affinity for their employer, and they don’t want to depend on institutional and tribal knowledge to get their job done.
For transportation and logistics companies that want a single system of action, there’s no better investment than ServiceNow. To learn more about how to use this transformative platform to make your company a more attractive place to work, please reach out to the ServiceNow experts at Crossfuze. We’ll show you how a single system of action powered by ServiceNow is the key to unlocking so many of your most important, long-term business goals.
