On this week’s episode of Taking the Hire Road, guest host Leah Shaver, president and CEO of the National Transportation Institute, is joined by Eileen Dabrowski, director of learning, development and marketing at ReedTMS Logistics.
Like many within the industry, Dabrowski came to trucking with no prior experience with the work. “All I knew about trucks,” she says, “was that they are bigger than me and that they’re on the road.”
But a phone call from Jason Reed, CEO of ReedTMS, pulled Dabrowski out of higher education in 2016. During her time in academia, where she wore the hats of crisis counselor, victim advocate and emergency responder, to name but a few, Dabrowski developed skills that were readily transferable to the trucking industry.
At ReedTMS, Dabrowski built the company’s training program from the ground up, onboarding every new employee — no matter the role. Coming into contact with such a diverse set of people and their many responsibilities inspired her to gain a deeper understanding of the different positions in the industry.
It was a popular misconception, Dabrowski found, to “treat recruitment and working with truck drivers as totally different tasks.”
“I’m a firm believer that a recruiter should know exactly what it is to be a truck driver.” Without this firsthand experience, she argues, recruiters are unable to understand the unique pressures that drivers often face.
Yet, even though drivers face a common set of challenges, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to self-care.
“Self-care is designed to be personal and subjective,” Dabrowski maintains, and so it “should be defined by the person themselves — not by their company or the truck they drive or the job they have.”
To begin sketching the outline of one’s self-care habits, one should first reflect on the identities they bear, be it one’s cultural upbringing or interpersonal relationships and the responsibilities they entail.
These aspects that define an individual are not often apparent to others, however. Open and free communication among employees and employers is therefore a necessity for putting self-care into practice.
“Growing up, I was taught that you don’t show vulnerability because it makes you weak,” Dabrowski said. “I have since learned to completely but respectfully disagree with that sentiment.
“If we don’t talk about the things that make us human, how can we be stronger together and support one another?”
Both Shaver and Dabrowski note the pervasiveness of mistaking such self-care for selfishness. “In an industry that runs 24/7/365,” Shaver stresses, implementing and encouraging self-care is something that takes “not only self-awareness but also empathy.”
People in leadership positions, Dabrowski asserts, should be acutely aware of their own reserves of empathy. “Try not to schedule all of your one-on-one meetings on the same day,” because it is important “to give everyone who asks to meet with you your full attention.”
If these precepts are followed by managerial staff, it reflects well on the business. “We live in a world of referrals,” Dabrowski notes. “If people are happy at a company, they’re going to tell everyone about it.”
Click here to learn more about ReedTMS.
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