This is Part Three of a three-part story. See Part One here and Part Two here.
No fleet or shop can exist without having established lines of communication that connect technicians on the ground with leadership in the office. While some obvious examples of this include evacuation plans and company policy notices, making sure there's an unfettered flow of information between all levels of a fleet takes a bit more legwork.
In Part One of this story, we discussed why communication is so critical and the basic tenets of how to have a clear discussion, and in Part Two, we outlined some of the options shops and fleets have to communicate, from texting and messaging platforms to emails and walkie-talkies.
Now, here's how to make sure the disparate parts of any fleet or a shop with multiple locations are on the same page, as well as how to keep employees together through conflict.
From the shop to the C-suite
Fleet communication has to include more than a single shop’s disaster plans or the distribution of safety training to the company. It also must encompass communication between the technicians on the ground and the decision-makers at the top. And this can be tricky, especially when maintenance is both costly and critical.
Amanda Schuier, strategic maintenance director at Jetco Delivery and the 2024-2025 general chairman and treasurer for American Trucking Associations’ Technology and Maintenance Council, is often in the position of needing to be the link between shop management and company executives, a job which may include explaining why a truck’s maintenance costs are rising.
Communication between these two spheres is especially important in these situations, when a solution on paper may not translate to the shop floor or vice versa.
“Sometimes in the office, we see a solution, but then in the shop, we’re able to say, ‘Okay, this will or won’t work’ because we’re able to back it up with technical information,” Schuier noted.
As an example, Jetco wanted to save money on tire costs. Schuier investigated using super single tires on a vehicle but found that because of the permitted load of the truck, the tires weren’t going to achieve the company’s goal.
This kind of communication requires that leadership and shop technicians are not siloed with executives up in a glass-paned tower while techs remain down in the trenches.
It is for this reason that Matthew Copot, VP of fleet management for Saia, a less-than-truckload fleet out of Georgia, keeps an open line of communication.
“A technician is free to make a phone call to me or directors or regional managers,” he stated. “And regional managers, directors, and I are always walking shop floors to talk to people and find out what’s happening.”
As an example, Copot once struck up a conversation with a driver while leaving Saia’s corporate office and heard about his needs regarding the pallet jack he was using. Unbeknownst to the driver, Copot was working on sourcing more of what he needed, which allowed the driver to have the clarity he required right away.
Both Jetco and the Wisconsin-based HM Repairs and Services facilitate this kind of interdepartment communication with regular meetings. HM Repairs holds shared Microsoft Teams meetings between its two locations each month, allowing everyone to share the room at the same time.
Read more: Kolman’s Komments: How to make meetings more meaningful
Jetco has consistent shop and operations meetings with attendees from shops, operations, and senior leadership, with Schuier further spreading the information from each meeting by sending out agendas and summaries before and after each event. “Even if you didn’t attend the meeting, you still know what happened,” she explained.
If a shop or fleet can’t coordinate direct meetings between technicians and executives, that’s where middle management’s communication skills become critical in making sure that technicians feel heard.
“What your team needs to know is that you’re at the table vying for them and that you’re stepping up with your bosses and your leaders and saying, ‘We need these types of resources for our teams to do the job that they need to do,’” said Beverly Beuermann-King, workplace culture and resiliency speaker and expert at Work Smart Live Smart. The consulting company works with organizations to improve personnel management and satisfaction.
Communicating through employee conflict
Finally, there’s no situation in which communication is more important than conflict. And in a chicken-and-egg way, conflict also tends to grow from poor communication.
“Toxicity grows; it becomes more pervasive the longer we allow it,” Beuermann-King warned. Toxic behaviors can include passive-aggressiveness, backstabbing, withholding information, blaming, and the silent treatment—all of which can cause havoc to a fleet’s communication streams and the business at large.
But although more difficult than a standard notification or conversation, communication can help defuse these situations as long as the participants figure out how to communicate more effectively and how to address the underlying issues, Beuermann-King said.
This requires understanding the ‘payoff’ of negative behavior, be it contrariness or gossiping.
“Because there’s always a payoff, whether it’s recognition or control or attention, and when we understand that, then we can meet those needs in a much more appropriate way,” Beuermann-King explained.
Addressing this requires a personalized conversation with the employee in question as well as a system for feedback and accountability.
“It’s important to take that person aside and say, ‘This is what we want the mission and values of the company to be, and we need you to stop doing X and become more part of this,’” HM Repairs’ CFO Jessica Wendt concluded.
