“If you look at the number of people going into this field, it seems to be on the decline,” says Tamla Oates-Forney, senior vice president, chief human resources officer at Waste Management.
Paperless employee wm driver#
The waste management industry is experiencing a national driver shortage and an “all-time low unemployment rate.”
Paperless employee wm how to#
We’re teaching each other how to grow and to be better and to be safe.” “At that point, we’re doing exactly what we want to do as a company. “One thing I really enjoy is taking a driver that’s done it for years and helping him see things in a different light and then having a new driver that’s never touched a trash truck get in there and watching them have that teamwork,” Roses says.
Paperless employee wm drivers#
Integrating drivers and technicians in training together has resulted in a sharing of best practices across the company and a kinship among the diverse workforce. Even on a day we’re teaching DOT rules and regulation, we tie it back to safety.” “We’re teaching them how to do it the Waste Management way. “There isn’t a day in this facility where we don’t cover safety,” Cook says. “When we get out on the course, they work in a mock residential town and we help them understand how they can apply every one of these principles that we’re trying to teach them in a wide environment, behind the wheel with somebody next to them showing them how and when they can be used,” Roses says.Įvery lesson, no matter what the topic, is tied back to safety. Calculating following distances and how to advance their field of view are all concepts the drivers learn on the driving course that they carry with them while driving on highways and through residential neighborhoods. “They proved that drivers that go through the training facilities are far less likely to get into an accident, far less likely to get injured and far more likely to stay with us after their first year.”Īpplying basic principles and good behaviors, including how to get on and off a truck properly, “tend to be the difference between a job and a career,” Cook says. “That was the proof of concept to make all this work,” says Ryan Cook, site manager at the Glendale training center. Waste Management opened the Glendale training center after seeing the benefits and rewards from its first training center in Fort Myers, Florida.
More than 100 driver and technician students will graduate from the facility each week of the year. The 30,000 square-foot facility with a 10-acre driver training course, classrooms, computer labs and technician workstations opened in late April. I always tell them, ‘If you practice the basics, you will have a long career in this industry.’” “It makes it a lot easier when my students get out there and I can actually hands-on show them that just by doing the little things they can be good stewards to the company and to our communities. “I’ve really been able to apply my past experience to my students and help them understand what we’re trying to achieve,” Roses says. Their instructor, Roses, started with the company as a roll-off driver 10 years ago and worked his way up in the company from residential route manager to trainer and mentor.
Over two weeks of sharing an apartment, meals and training together “they become friends with their teammates,” Roses says.ĭuring the first week, technicians are exposed to classes and hands-on shop training every day and drivers are immersed in a classroom where they learn Waste Management safety principles and behaviors, which they apply on a simulated driving course during the second week. “When they get here, they’re really from all over the country,” says Dan Roses, a driver trainer at the Glendale training center.
Some are skilled drivers with 15 years of experience and others don’t have their commercial driver's license (CDL). When drivers and technicians arrive at Houston-based Waste Management’s training center in Glendale, Arizona, some of them have never been on a plane before.