I'm baaaaaack!!!!!!!!

What happened when the ops guy from Gordon called you?

 

Woot! Woot! Three posts in a row from the Cap'n!

 

Your exit interview sounded like the guy was trying to justify their status quo as he filled out a form, as was the case with mine. I realized something after mine that might help shed some undersyanding on this.

Gordon is a large company. It's not Swift with 15,000 power units, but 2,000 of them is big enough to have the executives lose touch with the "boots on the ground," especially during a merger with another major carrier.

I used to be a middle manager for a federal agency. One of my responsibilities was conducting informal face-to-face exit interviews with field office personnel so we could make changes if we could. In the long run, there was nothing we could do because federal personnel policies are very complex, rigid, and designed to manage a very large work force -- the FAA, alone, had 50,000 employees at levels from wage-grade to senior executives worldwide.

I also hold a Ph.D. in human organizational development so this is well within my area of expertise.

In Gordon's case, having personnel policies for a 2,000 driver workforce makes changing them very difficult. Making meaningful personnel changes to enhance longevity in a driver workforce that statistically turns over every year is, in my view, impossible. They want to do the right thing, as they have from the beginning when the original Mr. Gordon decided to become a trucking company, but layers of complexity have been added as the company has grown -- and now they are owned by a company with very different corporate standards and practices.

Making meaningful, lasting changes requires flexibility that the company no longer has. They are so large that they cannot take the time to 'fix' my issues or your issues or those of any individual driver. The form that the Ops Manager completed on your, and my and Joe's and Tow's and Bumper's and all the other drivers' exit interviews will be filed until such time as some VP asks a data analyst to compile a report.

I doubt that will happen under HTLD's ownership. My guess is they will stop because someone will realize nothing happens with the data accumulated.

 

I'm sure they do review exit interviews, but I doubt they are motivated to do much unless there is pressure.

Joe & Toe left Gordon about the same time I left Con-Way for essentially the same reason -- low pay/miles. Both GTI and Con-Way had historically enjoyed low turnover rates, but found themselves facing an unanticipated exodus of drivers in the first half of 2014. Both wound up rushing significant wage increases in the second half of the year.

In Con-Way's case, management had been promising that raise for well over a year but just hadn't gotten around to it -- too busy dealing with their own management shake-up (not unlike GTI after Heartland). But when they got around to releasing their quarterly report and realized they had 500 trucks sitting unassigned, oh hey, we better see why folks are leaving!