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How Promoting Employee Happiness Benefits Everyone

Happy employees positively affect workplace operations. Statistics show that companies that foster employee happiness outperform their competitors by 20%It’s no surprise, then, that some companies are taking more active measures to promote positive employee experiences. 

In 2015, Airbnb became one of the most notable companies to tackle the topic of employee happiness by hiring someone whose role was specifically dedicated to managing and improving their employee’s experiences. At the time, they transitioned their Chief Human Resources Officer into their shiny new position, the Head of Employee Experience. 

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Case Study: How to Build An Inclusive Workplace

Workplace diversity is critical to maintaining a competitive edge in business today. The varied perspectives of employees fuels greater idea generation, problem solving and innovation, which overall strengthens the company. However, many companies often don’t know how to build an inclusive and diverse work environment for its employees.  

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Why Women-Owned Transportation Businesses Thrive

The number of women-owned businesses is growing 2.5 times faster than the national average and has more than doubled in 20 years, according to American Express’ annual State of Women-Owned Businesses Report.  

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Five Tips for a Healthy Lifestyle on the Road

Working out of a truck can create roadblocks to healthy living. Typically, drivers don’t have set schedules, rely on truck stops for nourishment and sit for long stretches of time. Over time, this can lead to various health problems, including weight gain, back pain and lethargy.

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Staying Safe on the Road

Safety is a top concern for women drivers, according to the Women In Trucking Association’s Best Practices Guide to Increasing Women Drivers in the Industry. When asked to rate how safe they feel on a scale of 1–10, the average response for female drivers was just 4.4.

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Secrets for a Successful Driving Career

Successful women who have found career satisfaction in trucking say it’s important to own your career, be passionate about it, and always be true to yourself. They share practical advice on what keeps them excited about getting behind the wheel.

Take control of your career.

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5 Tips for Marketing to Women

Planning a marketing campaign of your own? Connect more effectively with a female audience by utilizing these strategies:

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How to Write Impactful Job Descriptions

64% of applicants wouldn’t respond to a job posting with a poorly written or confusing job title. And 60% find jargon to be annoying. Writing effective job descriptions is a challenging task, but it has a major impact on the quality of applicants your business receives. Small businesses can be especially susceptible to poorly written job descriptions — with a smaller staff and more at stake per individual performance. So, attracting the right talent is critical to business success.

Often, job descriptions are written based on a template or use a framework that’s a one-size-fits-all, generalized version of a role written from a company viewpoint. For experienced workers who aren’t in a hurry or are more passive about finding work, this approach isn’t going to grab the attention of highly skilled individuals looking for an exciting new challenge. Using a checklist of responsibilities and the skills and qualifications necessary to accomplish them doesn’t work. And for small businesses or start-ups who don’t have a brand identity to leverage, making your description something meaningful, interesting, and informative is critical.

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HR: 2020 Limits | 401-k, HSA's, HDHP's, FSA's

High-deductible health plans are replacing many traditional health plans, SHRM's 2019 Employee Benefits survey shows. This year, 59 percent of employers offered a HDHP linked to a savings/spending account, and 56 percent offered an HSA, according to the survey, which received 2,763 responses among a random sample of Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) members.

The FSA limit on carrying over unspent funds at the end of the year creates challenges for individuals who, for one reason or another, cannot accurately forecast the coming year’s medical expenses. Let's recall that in 2013, the IRS softened the “use it or lose it” rule to allow a $500 carryover per year. Directing the Secretary of the Treasury to increase the current $500 carryover allotment is welcome news to individuals who do not always exhaust their FSA accounts as anticipated. 

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J.B. Hunt Hosts Trucks are for Girls Event

Recently, J.B. Hunt’s GROW hosted the inaugural Trucks are for Girls event in Fayetteville, Ark. The event was powered by the Women In Trucking Association through their Girl Scout Transportation Patch program. Thirty Girl Scouts from the Northwest Arkansas area participated in the event which helped educate them on supply chain logistics.

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What Does Empowering Women Mean to You?

This is a question I often hear when people learn that I’ve written a book that empowers women and that I speak at many women’s conferences.

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Did You Ride the Mechanical Bull?

Did you attend the WIT Accelerate! Conference this year? I was a first-time attendee, thrilled for the opportunity to speak at one of your breakout sessions. I arrived early enough to attend the first night’s networking party—the State Fair Bash. There’s nothing like walking into a huge conference center ballroom, brightly decorated with State Fair themed balloon art, and a thousand people in attendance. Bright lights, vendor booths, corn dogs and cocktails. And tucked between the popcorn stand and one of the open bars was a mechanical bull. Yes, a bull—as in John Travolta in the movie Urban Cowboy for those of you who remember the 80s.  

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Human Resources and Talent Management- Mental Health and Wellbeing Perspectives

Few people in the transportation industry would argue with the statement that professional driving can be a very unhealthy occupation.  Physically, the long hours sitting behind the wheel, lack of exercise (or for many OTR drivers little physical movement at all) and easy access to unhealthy food and drinks all take their toll on driver health.  

However, what often goes unnoticed is the condition of professional driver mental health. The professional driver lifestyle – social isolation, the cumulative stress associated with safely handling an 80,000 pound vehicle through traffic, separation from family and the related issues that extended family separation creates - can lead to serious mental health conditions. The severity of those mental health conditions is obvious in data like this:

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Is It Time to Self-Insure Your Health Plan?

Self-insured health plans traditionally have been more popular with larger companies, with 250 or more employees.  With rising healthcare costs and ACA fees for fully insured plans, self-insured (a.k.a. self-funded, and or partially self-funded) plans are gaining popularity among small and medium-sized businesses.

What many employers like about self-insuring (and related alternative funding options) is access to knowing how the plan is spending. Accessibility to trends, usage, and limited analytical data are also helpful. In addition a self-insured plan is governed by ERISA (Federal laws) as opposed to your state’s laws, offering flexibility in designing your plan, with a uniformity of plan design should you have out-of-state locations.

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Looking for a Good Truck Driving School?

Looking for a Good Truck Driving School?

Check out the rest, and go with the Best!
Things to look for when choosing a Truck Driving School:

By Fran Bernard, International Trucking School of Michigan


Different Types of Truck Driving Schools


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Health and Benefits Options For Members: What This Means for Member Companies

Recently the Women In Trucking (WIT) Association President & CEO, Ellen Voie, was asked about WIT providing health insurance and employee benefits options for members. With insurance and benefits being such a big part of employee retention and attraction today, does it work for WIT Member Companies? To help explain this landscape, Ellen sat down with industry experts, Joe Simon of AON, and Cheryl Blake of OneDigital Health and Benefits to provide some thoughtful context. 

Joe Simon: “Employee benefits and the betterment of employees was not taken lightly by WIT, so we researched ways to assist member companies with affordable options provided by quality carriers. After about three years of studying the options presented here made sense.”

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WIT Honors Driver at the Richard Crane Memorial Truck Show

For 24 years, the Richard Crane Memorial Truck Show has been a highlight for the residents of St. Ignace, Michigan. This year’s event took place September 15. Hundreds of trucks crossed the Mackinac Bridge with their horns blaring and lights blazing as they made their way over the five-mile bridge. Fran (Crane) Bernard and her brother, Rick Crane, have been the driving force behind this annual event which honors their father, Richard Crane, a former driver, truck owner and founder of the American Truck Driving Schools. 

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Avoiding Turnover in High-Performing Salespeople

The average annual turnover rate for salespeople is 20%. Many factors account for that number, but a sizeable amount of voluntary turnover occurs from burnout and lack of motivation. To combat turnover, it’s crucial to put added resources behind your onboarding and development process to ensure your hires maintain the engagement, mental toughness, and willingness to tap into the personality traits that contribute to success in the role. We’ve previously discussed what the different sales jobs entail and which personality traits are best suited to those jobs, but how do you nurture your employees so that they maintain their performance and resist leaving?

Avoiding a Bad Hire

Just because a candidate exhibits the right personality traits doesn’t mean they will perfectly adapt to the role without additional coaching and development. Unproductive workers reduce revenue potential by 40%, and another 36% of your team can also experience negative performance trends when affected by negativity from a low-performing or unhappy co-worker. As we’ve previously outlined, it doesn’t always come down to experience. Look for candidates who are adept at navigating the modern sales force.

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My Year as the Influential Woman in Trucking

Ask Angela: How was your year as the Influential Woman In Trucking?

This opportunity allowed me to meet many amazing people. I was able to travel and speak at conferences - helping promote diversity in the industry. I met people who have dedicated their lives to trucking and those just thinking about starting a career. It's an exciting time to join a fleet, purchase your first rig or venture off - starting a trucking or 3PL company of your own. The opportunities are out there and associations like WIT are here to answer questions and provide support and connections.

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Six Components of Self-Management

The office environment can be a challenging place. You have to deal with all kinds of personalities at any given time, you see things that are broken but lack the resources or influence to fix them, and, often, people who don’t understand your work are there to tell you how to do it. But, we all just want to produce good results and receive acknowledgment for our effort. In an ideal world, you are in a role that plays to your strengths and motivations and limits exposure to your weaknesses, and you are partnered with a manager who serves as your advocate. In reality, you’re likely motivated by some aspects of your job and not always by others, and your manager has many other responsibilities that prevent them from being the best coach they can be to their team. In this scenario, the best you can do is do your best. And achieving your best requires a measure of self-management.

Motivation is often a set factor. In other words, you can’t choose what motivates you at work any more than you can choose your height or your family members. You can’t make yourself be outgoing if you’re shy, and you can’t spark competition if trophies don’t interest you. And the external factors that can stand between you and your goals—economic upheaval, competitive threats, disruptive changes, and mergers and acquisitions—aren’t something we can always plan for. You can, however, choose how you conduct yourself.

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