for drivers The Cyprien Fox incentive scheme (CM, Management Matters
Page 40
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
June 29) has to be questioned. If the "standard time" of any incentive scheme is "set" correctly, no operative (driver) will be able to exceed it very substantially.
My husband suggests that there is still, in road haulage, a great deal of skulduggery and non-conformity to laws of the land if some drivers are "earning £70 to £80 a week". There were many omissions in the article — basic pay, overtime rate /pay, standard time set for average mph, delayed loadings /unloadings and so on.
The consensus of opinion (money is a strong motivator) cannot be very strong! Not many months ago, transport operators (CM June 6) could not understand why drivers preferred agency work — as far as they knew money was not the motivator.
The word "incentive" is too often used in its limited sense of "financial".
Believe it or not, there do exist other (nonfinancial) inducements. The basic pay of an employee is given in return for his best services to employer. He (the driver) should not, in principle, require to be paid a second time for working hard, swiftly and profoundly — financial incentive savours of bribery.
It may be true that drivers in the age group 25 to 35 need high earnings to support a family. Yet employees in the same age group have because of their families, frequent days off and tend to be persons who are often "between jobs".
The wife, children, fireside, illness, lack of variety: these and many, many more are strong motivators. How and why does "Manpower" and other driver agencies obtain and retain drivers?
The answers will be found when a new association is born — Professional Road Transport Operators' Association, Mrs B. DICKSON Buttershaw, Bradford [JD comments: "I accept that most 'standar( times' of incentive schemes are based or work study research. If this has been don( properly drivers, on average, would just ge through their daily stint in the standard timo allowed.
"But it is customary to reward above standard performance in financial terms an some firms may choose to pay very liberall. for this since the added revenue earned b. the vehicle — or its productivity in term of goods delivered — more than compensate for the higher driver's pay.
"If drivers could only earn Wages Counc rates whatever their skill and effort ther would be a huge amount of frustration i. the industry. Many drivers would leave roa transport for engineering, building an construction industries where output bonuse are possible.
"Mr Alan Dixon, md of Cyprien Fox, wa quoted in the article: 'If the driver is nc interested in high cash returns then th system will not work for him. It will, howeve identify that type of man.'
"I have much sympathy with Mrs Dickson view that incentives are of many kind: Money alone may be the least admirabl incentive but it is clearly a major inducemer in commercial life — not only in rot transport.
"Driver agencies offer experienced me varieties of work — perhaps this is E incentive comparable with money?"]