Question

You work for a nationwide transportation company and provide oversight, management, and supervision for numerous drivers. Your company’s corporate office has recently established new performance guidelines for delivery driver productivity. Many of your drivers have expressed concerns, however, as the guidelines fail to consider numerous factors that can impact delivery schedules, such as significant road construction, bad weather, and even federal limits to the number of hours someone can drive without a rest. Two of your drivers even received an automated performance deficiency report from the company for delays associated with their respective delivery routes and it appears as though others under your direct supervision may be in danger of not meeting their performance guidelines as well.

What appears to be the underlying problem in this particular scenario?

Is this something you can correct by working with only your subordinates, or is the issue larger than that?

What corrective actions would you propose? What are some potential barricades to implementing those corrective actions?

Answer 1

The underlying problem in this particular scenario is the new performance guidelines for delivery driver productivity, established by the company's corporate office that neglected many significant factors that may effect the delivery schedules.

This is something that needs an immediate attention from the corporate office that issued these guidelines neglecting the genuine concerns of the drivers. Hence, this issue cannot be corrected by working with only subordinates.

The corrective measures that could be suggested is taking in the consideration for bad roads, bad weather and lessening the hours of continuous driving.

The potential barricades to implement corrective measures could be the attitude of the corporate office in implementing those measures and their cooperation in this regard.