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Effective driver training could help save lives — Taking the Hire Road

Luma Brighter Learning delivers safety training drivers will retain

This week Jeremy Reymer, founder and CEO of DriverReach and host of FreightWaves’ Taking the Hire Road podcast, sat down with Gina Anderson, co-founder and CEO of Luma Brighter Learning and author of “Teaching Without a Teaching Degree,” to discuss how trucking companies can create driver training programs that could help save lives.

“Our purpose is to enrich people’s lives through the learning that we create that engages and  inspires different learners (drivers),” Anderson said. “Our goal is to get rid of the type of learning that does not motivate and inspire drivers and create something beautiful to assist carriers with safety and retention.”

After spending years as an educator, Anderson was given an opportunity to sit in on the training processes drivers go through. That prompted her to take action and start Luma.

“I was aghast to see how they were trained and the resources they were given. They were made to watch videos and then were sleeping through the videos,” she said. “I saw this as a real opportunity to share best practices with an industry that seems to really need it.”

Many carriers struggle when it comes to educating drivers during the onboarding process and beyond, Anderson said. 

“A lot of carriers, before COVID-19, were doing in-person classroom learning, but it’s important to acknowledge that there are different modes of learning, whether in-person, online or a blended [version],” she said. “The biggest challenge is looking at these different modes and structuring training programs around them.”

Anderson stressed the importance of providing easily digestible training material. This involves working with carriers to carve out meaningful chunks of information. Retaining safety training is vital in life-or-death situations, she said. 

“The average person, when learning something brand new, needs to see something seven to nine times,” Anderson said. “Our research found that repeated instruction combined with smaller doses of content, related assessments and ongoing content reinforcement and communication led to better safety scores.”

To learn more about Luma Brighter Learning, visit its website.

Click for more FreightWaves content by Britni Chisenall.

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