Morale feeling low lately? One of the biggest challenges with having a career as a truck driver is finding a balance between time on the road and quality time with family. If your drivers feel the burden of long hours and burnout, a driver appreciation event is a great way to boost morale. It’s also a great way to strengthen the relationship between all of your employees, helping to increase retention and overall engagement. If you don’t know where to start, these five tips can help you host a successful driver appreciation event. 

1. Use your own resources.

Events can be expensive to host, but you can get creative with where you host them. Use your terminal or any other property you may own, like a sports arena. This will save money on site fees and expensive set-up and clean-up fees — and frees up some funds for food, swag, and entertainment. 

2. Extend the invitation.

Your drivers spend countless hours on the road away from their friends and family. Inviting their friends and family to the event is a great way to show that you understand their personal time is precious. By extending the invite to friends, you’re also potentially meeting and networking with people looking to change directions in their careers or curious about the trucking industry, making it a win-win for both you and the drivers. 

3. Capture content.

Employee appreciation events are a great culture-building activity and it’s very important that you capture content from them. Whether it’s videos or photos, recruiters can then leverage this content on social media or when engaging with talent. This type of content is really beneficial when it comes to showing, instead of telling, drivers about your company. 

4. Use it as a driver podium.

Events are a great forum to recognize and celebrate your drivers. Start off with your leadership expressing gratitude for all the employees in attendance. Then, celebrate your drivers by giving special shout-outs or small gifts for achieving different milestones like the number of safe deliveries they’ve completed, years of service, miles driven, and more. When highlighting these drivers, you can also give them the podium to tell their stories or share positive experiences with the rest of the team. 

5. Follow up.

If you opened up your event to friends and family, make sure your recruiters have business cards on-hand and are prepared to follow up after the event. Continuing the interaction after the event shows prospective drivers how invested you are in their career and how much you appreciate your fleet. 

Whether it’s a simple barbeque event or something larger, investing in an employee appreciation event is a great way to strengthen your relationship with your fleet. Extending the invite to family and friends, showcasing and celebrating your drivers, and following up with leads is also a great recruitment tool to grow your team. If this sounds right for you, reach out to KJ Media to take your event to the next level.