Did you have a chance to attend our recent webinar, “CDL Driver Recruiters: What You Need to Know About Recognizing and Avoiding Unconscious Bias”? We received more questions than we had time to answer in the allotted time, so our presenter, Ellen Voie, President and CEO of Women in Trucking, answered them below in this Q&A-style blog post.
If you weren’t able to join the webinar live, don’t worry – you can watch it on-demand anytime!
Question: Any thoughts on providing "no cost" truck training for women that can't afford to go to school?
Answer: We do offer scholarships for female drivers, technicians, safety professionals and women in leadership through our scholarship foundation (www.womenintruckingfoundation.org) We also support the Registered Apprenticeship program which offers free tuition to potential drivers.
Question: What do you mean by glass ceiling?
Answer: That term was in a recruiting ad for female drivers, which indicated there is upward mobility potential at that carrier.
Question: When you explained your point on women feeling safe, is that overall or at a shipper?
Answer: We asked women to tell us how safe they feel in their job on a scale of 1-10 and the responses averaged 4.4, so that incudes every aspect of the job. However, our White Paper outlines where drivers feel least safe.
Question: In the study of Crimes to Women or minorities, did that include sexual orientation drivers too? If not, why?
Answer: The study was conducted by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which covered female drivers, minority drivers and white males as the control group. The Women In Trucking research includes a non-binary option, but this doesn’t necessarily capture sexual orientation.
Question: Do you have a specific TikTok account name to share?
Answer: @womenintrucking (https://www.tiktok.com/@womenintrucking)
Question: Do you know if the November 15th event would provide travel for some wanting to attend?
Answer: The Accelerate! Conference and Expo is November 13-16 in Dallas, TX. We don’t offer travel expenses, but we offer a discounted rate for professional drivers and also an early bird rate. There are scholarships available for college students through one of our members, ProDriver Project here.
Question: How can we as a motor carrier help women in trucking feel safer while at a truck stop?
Answer: We offer self defense courses at our events, and many trucking companies have hired these professionals to speak at their own company events. (Survive Institute) We often have webinars or provide blogs and resources on staying safe as a driver.
Question: Does WIT provide courses around these issues that we could pass on to our employees? Maybe something that could be used in orientation or ongoing training with current employees?
Answer: We hold webinars and offer white papers and best practices information throughout the year. We also have a mentoring program for new drivers. We are working on obtaining a toll free hotline for the trucking industry as well. We offer many resources but our newest link is for our driver portal.
Stay up to date on CDL trucking trends! Be sure to check out the DriverReach blog for other relevant articles and head over to our webinars page for an up-to-date list of upcoming events and on-demand recordings.
Interested in seeing DriverReach’s modern Recruiting and Compliance Management System in action? Request a demo!
