The Core 4 Metrics Safety Directors Should Be Looking At Each Week

You know the old saying: “You can’t manage what you don’t measure?”

As a Safety Director tasked with overseeing recruiting, compliance, and safety efforts in your company, you must use metrics to avoid wasting time and money, keep auditors and plaintiff’s attorneys out of your hair, and make sure all of your drivers make it home to their families for dinner.

With so much data at your fingertips, it can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to metrics. To keep it simple, we recommend Safety Directors focus on The Core 4.

The Core 4 Metrics for Safety Directors

1. Cost Per Hire

What is it? A hire is someone who made it through the application process, showed up for their first day of work or training, and is actively on payroll. Cost per hire is the amount of money it costs your business to hire one new employee. 

The simple way to calculate cost per hire is: Ad Spend / Hires = Advertising Cost Per Hire.

An even more accurate metric is All-In Cost Per Hire, which takes into account the cost of:

• All salaries involved in recruiting, screening, and onboarding
• MVRs, PSPs, background checks, drug screens, and any other screening tools you use
• Advertising

It looks like this: Salaries + Screening Costs + Ad Spend = All-In Cost Per Hire.

Why is it important? This is the ultimate recruiting metric because it tells you how effective and efficient you are at bringing new drivers into your company. It’s a pretty simple concept: Spend the least amount possible to hit your hiring goals. Tracking cost per hire helps you measure your recruitment effectiveness and determine where to spend your dollars.

How do you track it? Advertising Cost Per Hire: Enter your ad spend by source in A-Suite each month, and it will calculate Cost Per Hire for you. It’s so important that A-Suite will email it to you each month.

How can you improve it? The first step is proper messaging. Are you “Purple Cowing” your company in your recruitment efforts? The second step is being efficient with your leads, auto-rejecting unqualified candidates, and speeding up the hiring process — see days to hire, below.

What’s the benchmark? A finger-to-the-wind benchmark for advertising cost per hire is $750, but your mileage may vary depending on the competitiveness of your market. The goal is always to drive it as low as possible. That’s why it’s so important to begin measuring it for yourself.

2. Lead-to-Hire Conversion Rate

What is it? At AvatarFleet, we consider a lead to be a candidate who submitted an initial interest form on your candidate landing page or from an external source like Indeed or Facebook. The lead-to-hire conversion rate is: Number of Hires / Number of Leads, expressed as a percentage.

Why is it important? Drivers are a revenue center for your company. The more folks you have to choose from, the better chances you have of hitting your targets. A healthy lead flow means you’re able to stay staffed up. A good lead-to-hire conversion rate means you’re attracting the right candidates and onboarding them effectively.

How do you track it? The number of leads and hires in a given time period is easy to see within A-Suite reporting and a standard report.

How can you improve it? While lead volume is important, we’re all about quality over quantity because your time is money. That’s where the conversion rate comes into play. AvatarFleet helps you improve this recruiting metric by making it easy to apply and conveying your company’s brand story on your Candidate Landing Page.

What’s the benchmark? Benchmark figures vary depending on your niche, location, and other factors. In terms of lead volume, around 20 leads per seat is a good rule of thumb. A baseline for the lead-to-hire conversion rate is roughly 5%. Compare your lead-to-hire percentage by source so you can monitor which advertising channels perform well for you and allocate your budget accordingly. While important, this metric is secondary to Cost Per Hire.

3. Days to Hire

What is it? Days to hire is the number of days it takes your company to hire someone after they’ve applied for the position.

Why is it important? Days to hire is important to track because speed is a major predictor of your recruiting success. A lengthy hiring process has several downsides. Drivers are judging you during the recruiting process; a long and archaic process represents what their experience will be when they join you. A slow and clunky process increases the number of candidates that ghost you. Then there are the hard costs of taking more than 30 days. You will have to run additional background checks and Motor Vehicle Records requests, and you’ll have one more month of employment verification.

How do you track it? AvatarFleet users can view this information in A-Suite’s online and email reports.

How can you improve it? A-Suite lifecycle stages show you exactly where a candidate is in the hiring process at any given time. You can see where the log jam is and ask why to figure out what is slowing down that section of the hiring process.

What’s the benchmark? Less than two weeks to go from lead to behind-the-wheel. Your goal should be to hire drivers as quickly as possible. There’s no reason days to hire can't be 14 days or fewer. While candidates’ schedules don’t always align with road test schedules, if you’re measuring this in months, you’re doing something wrong.

4. Drivers in Compliance

What is it? Drivers in compliance look at whether drivers who have compliance rules assigned to them have any violations.

Why is it important? You just have to be 100% compliant. Period. Our Safety Directors are always thinking about how this will look if they have to go to deposition. Do you really want to stare down an attorney named “The Hammer” and tell him that you're a safe operator even though you don’t follow federal regulations or your own safety policy?

How do you track it? A-Suite’s Comply dashboard does the work for you and gives you a big red box with a number of how many drivers are on the Do Not Dispatch list. You do not want to think about this one: Make it obvious and in your face.

How can you improve it? Compliance is a perfect task to automate because it’s repetitive and well-defined. A-Suite will automatically order MVRs for you, alert drivers via text and email to update their licenses or med cards, and send form requests on your behalf. Eighty percent of drivers will be professionals and do the required task with no prompting from you. You just focus on the 20% who need a little extra love to get 100% compliant.

What’s the benchmark? When it comes to compliance, you have to be at 100%.

Metrics Recap

We know you didn’t get into the transportation industry to crunch numbers. But as we said at the start of this article, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Staying focused on The Core 4 will simplify your job because you’ll know what to put on the top of your to-do list. Everyone needs a number!

You wouldn't want to watch the big game without knowing the score, right? With A-Suite’s reporting capabilities, you can keep a scoreboard for yourself to make sure you’re bringing home a W at work every day.

To get started measuring and optimizing The Core 4 metrics, don’t hesitate to get in touch with your AvatarFleet Client Success Manager today.