Lancer Insurance
Friday, March 29, 2024

BY JOHN GREENE

You might own the largest ground transportation company in the country, be the toast of your boardroom, make a boatload of money, and maybe even see your face plastered on the cover of a respected business journal every now and then. But at the end of the day, you are only as good as the chauffeur making $15 per hour who’s driving that Fortune 500 CEO from his hotel to the airport.

chauffeur hiring and retention johnny green

It’s a fact that might be a little humbling, a little sobering, maybe even a little bit frightening. But it’s definitely a wake-up call: Unless the industry focuses on hiring and retaining the best chauffeurs we can find—particularly with Uber promising the world and more—then we as an industry are looking toward a world of hurt. Why? Uber hires drivers; you employ professional chauffeurs. Or do you?

It’s a scenario that plays out when two strangers meet:
“So, what do you do for work?”
“I’m a chauffeur.”
“Oh, that’s interesting. Do you enjoy your job?”
“It’s OK until something better comes along.”

Does it bother you that chauffeurs—who are usually the most critical touch points in satisfying your clients—often think of this as a job rather than a career? It should. The perception of a “chauffeur” being a way station until “something better comes along” is a notion that has persisted in our industry for years. Its genesis lies in the misperception that anyone with a driver’s license and working knowledge of how to operate a GPS and open a car door is qualified to shuttle around Hollywood stars, CEOs, and bridezillas. We see it most when the economy tanks and people are out of work. That newly unemployed person, through self-preservation, turns to using the one skill he has possessed since he was 16 years old: the ability to drive a car. And when the economy flips back, it’s often sayonara to a good portion of your staff. Why did we allow this to happen? We’re at a time when driverless cars are making headlines as a real possibility soon. It wouldn’t be the first profession replaced by technology, but could we be chauffeured transportation without the chauffeur? Doesn’t the element of a human concierge add to the experience of being driven? Haven’t we proven as an industry that merely transporting a client safely from point A to point B is the smallest part of the job? So why do so many of us treat chauffeurs like they are replaceable instead of as the professionals they are?

Towers Watson, an international human resources and risk management firm, cites four top reasons why your best employees leave.

1. Career management: Oftentimes, we are adding chauffeur staff so quickly to meet a demand that we don’t stop to properly manage their trajectory through the company. Even if you have a thorough training program once or twice a year, it’s not enough.

Fix: If you’re serious about elevating the profession, then it’s time to treat it as you would your best executive position. It starts the day that you hire your chauffeur and doesn’t stop after he completes his training. Consider one-on-one chauffeur mentors with junior and senior staff, but you never want them to be in a position where they are competing for runs. If you’re a larger company, think about hiring a full-time chauffeur manager who supervises each step of the journey: You want your new hire to be excited about his prospects from day one, so lay out a plan on how he can grow with the company and have a real future. An HR professional might not be enough; he needs someone who understands the challenges of the job to help him manage his career.

2. No career advancement: Everyone wants to feel like they are advancing in their careers, and chauffeurs can be especially pigeon-holed in one title forever. Never having any benchmarks or goals to meet can be limiting in a career, and it would be easy to see why a chauffeur would consider it a temporary stop until something better comes along. This is the top reason why your best employees leave.

Fix: Career management lets your staff know there is a way to constantly grow and evolve with your company. Creating steps in your chauffeur pool beyond just “chauffeur” and “senior chauffeur” might motivate them to want to achieve that next level. Perhaps reward them with a series of pins they can wear to denote their achievement, and always make a fuss about it. Don’t let that motivation to do a better job benefit some other company.

3. Isolation from colleagues: Of all the positions within a ­company, chauffeurs face the most isolation and lack that connection to the company that your other office staff have in spades. Odd hours add to the isolation, and most often their only “allies” are chauffeurs from other companies.

Fix: Hanging out with chauffeurs from other companies isn’t a problem per se, unless they are picking up their bad habits and letting your quality standards suffer. It’s imperative to conduct regular meetings with your entire chauffeur staff, whether it’s weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Include chauffeur staff whenever possible in larger companywide meetings and events so that they are consistently interacting with their peers. Cross-train chauffeurs with other office positions so that they understand the dilemmas their colleagues face. Make every effort to keep them as connected to the company as possible.

4. Pay: The number-two reason why employees leave. Compensation is always on the minds of your most ambitious employees. If it weren’t, Uber wouldn’t be able to easily lure your chauffeurs away with promises of $1,000+ per week.

Fix: This is a tricky situation because pay is often limited to how much a company can afford. There are different schools of thought on how to compensate chauffeurs and you won’t please everyone, but understand that you often get what you pay for. Again, if your goal is to elevate the career into a profession and hang on to the best, then you have to treat them as professionals in all areas. It should go without saying, but any non-predetermined gratuities are theirs alone. They earned it.


How do we retain our staff, make them take pride in their work, and help them see being a chauffeur as a career and not just another job? And then how do we use that pride to construct an alligator-filled moat around our best employees when Uber tries to storm the barricades? It starts with how the company hires and handles chauffeurs from the very beginning of their employment. If you make your company an inviting place to work and grow, provide a decent living as well as career development and training, and treat them as a valuable part of the company’s team, you will likely have buy-in. Treat them as minimum wage employees who are replaceable at any time and you’ll reap what you sow. That’s in stark contrast to many areas in Europe where being a chauffeur is a respected profession, one that the next generation would be proud—not embarrassed—to pursue.

With statistics showing that most chauffeured ground transportation companies are devoting more than a third of their gross revenue to labor, wages, and benefits, it only serves to drive home the importance of hiring and training the best chauffeurs we can. Failing at this task is an invitation for bad things to happen, from disgruntled clients to crippling lawsuits. The chauffeur is the cornerstone of your company: Every minute you spend training that individual will pay off tremendously in the future success of your company. Your business mirrors the quality of your chauffeurs, so it is imperative to make sure you give them the tools and training to do their job well and, perhaps just as important, to want to stay with your company. And therein lies a major problem.

For my company, it’s all about making them feel like employees instead of contractors. We have about 100 chauffeurs: 48 of them have been with us for more than a year, and the remainder clocks in at anywhere from 2.5 to more than seven years. We give them a competitive starting wage and an attractive benefits package including health, dental, and long-term disability. We offer them newer model vehicles, high-tech bells and whistles to make their jobs easier, flexible hours, and the opportunity to make as much as they need by driving as much as they want.

It’s crucial that we all drive home to our chauffeurs that this is a really good job, particularly weighed against sitting at a desk in a cubicle all day, digging ditches, or tarring a roof in July. They get to dress well, spend time in an air-conditioned, top-of-the-line vehicle, and meet some pretty interesting people. What they do matters. But don’t sugarcoat the reality of it, as there will be times when they are stuck in traffic for hours, need to drive in a snowstorm at 4 a.m., and somebody is bound to, sooner or later, get sick in their back seat. In the long run, though, the positives will always outweigh the negatives.

Another important area to help retention—and one I cannot stress enough—is creating a reward system where your chauffeurs’ performance will dictate whether they take the men’s bowling league to the local strip club, or a back seat full of high-powered executives to the Four Seasons Hotel (i.e., more prestige, better tips, etc.). Most people want to be inspired to do better, and our chauffeurs–and your chauffeurs–are no exception. Give your chauffeurs more responsibility and it will give them more credibility. We also offer a $50 bonus for all referrals, payable after a 90-day probationary hiring period.

There are challenges ahead to finding and keeping good chauffeurs, and perception can be one of the toughest things to change, particularly with Uber thrown into the mix. Operators are worried that Uber is stealing their chauffeurs, which may be true in some cases. So it is our job to make sure they realize that they can work for a professional ground transportation company that values their services and their skills enough to trust them with our biggest accounts (and reward them accordingly), or they can go get that promise of a big Uber payday as pretty much nothing more than a glorified taxi driver. Booking with Uber is like staying at a motel when you’re on a road trip and can’t drive any more for the night: It’s easy, it’s convenient, and it’s there when you need it, but those things are essentially its only benefits.

If you keep your current chauffeurs happy and they stick around for the long haul, they are likely to maintain a positive attitude about the company that will be reflected in their service to others. Wanting to do a good job will come naturally to them and your customers will see that. “At the airport, all drivers talk,” says one ground transportation executive. “Having our chauffeurs at the airport saying good things about the company, I think we get a lot of people that way.” If you and your company command positive word of mouth, good chauffeurs will seek you out, will want to work for you and, hopefully, will want to stay with your company. [CD0215]

John Greene is the president and CEO of ETS International in Randolph, Mass. He can be reached at jgreene@etsintl.net.