“If you take care of the Three Ts of time, talent and technology, you will be way ahead of the game,” says Dave Dallas, chief commercial officer at Sunteck Transport.
Everyone is time-crunched, Dallas says, and the technology that is supposed to improve productivity “also can pull at our time and create busy work.” Managing time for yourself and your employees is important in any business, but that importance is magnified in logistics, “where goods are moving 24/7and deliveries schedules can be very demanding,” he says.
The second T, talent, is not limited to attracting the best qualified employees, Dallas says. “You then have to nurture and develop that talent and present them with bigger opportunities. A lot of people miss that.” Dallas says research has shown that perks are way down the list when employees explain why they stay with a company. “What is important to them is to be valued and to have an opportunity to be the best they can be and to do as much as they can possibly do,” he says.
One way to accomplish that, which is missing in today’s environment, is mentorship, Dallas says. “I don’t see a lot of companies assigning a buddy or mentor to work with new and or existing employees, and we all need mentor –someone to look up to. I would love to see more mentoring programs in the broader marketplace.”
The third T, technology, “is just not an option,” Dallas says. “If you don’t have it, you are not even in the game.” One of the biggest ways that technology has changed the logistics industry is shipper self-service, says Dallas. “Shippers used to want to talk to you about handling their load, but now they just go online and book the load themselves,” he says. “That’s really impacted the way we do business.”
