Delivery drivers can take a lot of work to recruit. While the gig economy has plenty of available delivery jobs, it requires licensed, experienced drivers, and the market is incredibly competitive, usually having 16 job seekers per role.
Related: The State of the Job Market: Last Mile Delivery Drivers
Research from Scandit’s 2022 Global Delivery Insight – Driver Views from the Last Mile reports that delivery drivers look for five crucial factors when choosing prospective employers: salary, benefits, work-life balance, brand reputation, and delivery technology.
Here are some tips to improve your recruitment strategy to focus on drawing in those hard-to-find qualified and engaged delivery drivers.
Create Attractive Salary and Benefit Offers
According to Scandit, 43% of delivery drivers choose an employer based solely on salary, and 27% do the same regarding benefits. Of course, compensation will depend on your industry and the type of delivery driver you’re looking for. Regardless, it would be best to learn the general salary comparison of other delivery drivers in your industry and offer competitive salaries and benefits. With many ambitious drivers vying for similar roles, you must ensure your offers stand out.
Regarding benefits, you want to ensure that your delivery drivers are well taken care of. Offering flexible working hours, paid time off, health insurance, complimentary auto tune-ups, gas compensation, or varied growth opportunities can significantly increase the attractiveness of an offer and help your delivery drivers feel confident and engaged while they’re delivering.
You can also think outside the box. You could incorporate a bonus program where delivery drivers can earn rewards after achieving a certain number of deliveries or reaching a positive review goal.
Ensure a Healthy Work-Life Balance
Delivery drivers often struggle with maintaining a healthy work-life balance due to the needs of the job. While gig delivery drivers will often have an easier time setting boundaries due to the short nature of the deliveries, if you need a driver to take on a longer delivery, you should ensure you’re providing the resources to match that labor. Regardless of the length or quantity of the deliveries, you’ll need creative and response-driven resources to ensure your drivers feel comfortable and committed.
The biggest thing you can do to help your delivery drivers have a healthy work-life balance is to offer flexible schedules. That way, they can work when needed and be home or take care of other duties when required. The more in control the employee feels about their schedule, the more productive and focused they’ll be. However, this might mean that you switch to contract offers instead of full-time or part-time job offers. That being said, having multiple contracted drivers can just as easily suit your needs as having multiple full-time drivers.
Branding and Delivery Technology
Ultimately, delivery drivers want to know that your company is looking out for their health and safety, especially en route. Incorporating GPS tracking software into your deliveries can improve a driver’s quality of life.
GPS tracking allows drivers to see and track their routes and deliveries, helps you keep them on schedule, and keeps the driver safe. It improves delivery logistics and keeps your drivers secure. To further enhance your logistics operations, consider integrating something like pick and pack fulfillment services, which streamline the order processing and packaging workflow. It is highly recommended that your company employs a delivery logistics system and GPS tracking so that you and the drivers feel confident about the schedule and their safety.
Overall employment of delivery truck drivers and driver/sales workers is projected to grow 11% from 2021 to 2031, much faster than the average for all occupations. It takes a consistent recruiting strategy to reach qualified drivers and passive candidates, but aligning your employer brand with the value that your company offers its employees can be vital to attracting elusive talent.
