In profile: Mick Tucker, Divisional Transport Manager, Noble Foods

Overseeing a fleet of around 80 vehicles at Noble Foods, the UK’s largest egg producer, presents a unique set of challenges. While there is no quick fix to solving the current shortage issues, Tucker has put in place measures that have helped retain the company’s existing driving workforce, while attracting new talent by giving the company’s employees the flexibility to achieve a healthy work-life balance.

FROM UNDERGROUND TO OVERGROUND

Tucker worked underground for the first 12 years of his career, as a mining engineer. Following the closure of the pits, he moved across to warehousing and food, entering the transport sector in the late 1990s where he has remained ever since. Working predominantly in food processing, he has been employed by big brands like Warburton’s, Pepsi and Walker’s crisps.

Joining Noble Foods, a Logistics UK member and leading supplier of fresh food brands to major retailers, a little over a decade ago, he now manages a fleet concerned mainly with the delivery of consumer eggs that you buy in supermarkets.

“I joined just over 11 years ago and at the time the business was trying to make sure that it improved its service into our customers, and particularly our farmers,” he said.

Noble Foods collects the eggs direct from poultry farmers, so a key part of Tucker’s role is understanding what the producers want from the drivers and ensuring that the business is geared up to deliver that service.

FLEXIBLE SHIFT PATTERNS

As well as its 200 permanent drivers, Noble Foods also employs a float of 40 casual drivers, who may work anything from three or four days a week to zero hours, depending on their personal choice.

“It suits our workload,” Tucker said, “with retailers we get a massive uplift on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, just as their supply chains restore stock ready for the weekend.”

Historically drivers at the company had set rotas that tended to be quite rigid. However, to accommodate the needs of both the drivers and the business more flexibility was required. To achieve this, Tucker said the company can either rely on agency drivers, which has cost implications for the business, or introduce flexible shift patterns. This flexible way of working particularly appealed to older drivers, who often want to reduce the number of hours they work.

“As we get older a lot of people want to work less,” Tucker said, “Now one of the things we’ve been pretty good at is spotting this pool of drivers who probably don’t want to retire to nothing but want to work one or two days a week. And we introduced that about eight and a half years ago.”

DOWNSHIFTING AT 50

The age these drivers want to work fewer hours varies according to the individual and personal circumstances, but Tucker identifies 50 as the age at which they begin to review their working arrangements.

“Financially they might be reasonably comfortable, they might have paid the mortgage off,” he said, “And at that stage of life their kids may have flown the nest, they have elderly relatives, they might have carers they have to consider, and they might share that caring with their spouses.

“They want the flexibility, they might not necessarily want as much money as they’ve had in the past and they don’t want to give it up totally, they still want to remain active and they recognise that work makes them be active, it forces them into a pattern.”

This part-time working is never imposed, however, it is all agreed through a process of mutual consent.

As a 364-day a year business, it is impossible for Tucker to allow everyone to work from Monday to Friday, so there needs to be a degree of compromise.

“You want to try to be fair to everybody,” he said, “Having this view of drivers, where they can pick which days they work, provided we’ve got the workload, is a great thing.”

The key to organising successful flexible shift patterns, Tucker believes, is knowing your drivers. With seven operating sites dotted around the UK and more than 200 driver shifts to organise that is no mean feat.

“We know what start times they like. If you want to lose drivers, change the start time – it’s an easy one. They like the consistency of starting at a certain time. Some people are morning people, some people are night-time people.”

PANDEMIC CHALLENGES

Since the COVID-19 pandemic swept the UK in spring 2020, Noble Foods has faced some testing times with its driving staff self-isolating and being off sick, but it has not seen a mass exodus of drivers.

Although a handful of drivers returned home abroad following Brexit, 95% of the drivers that worked for the company before the pandemic are still employed by Noble Foods.

The first few months of the pandemic saw some drivers not want to attend work because they were fearful of catching the virus and then bringing it home to vulnerable family members.

“We’re a food business,” Tucker said, “It’s pretty essential that we get people into work and we had to be pretty fluid about how we handled the workload during a massive uplift for eggs. It meant making sure we were utilising the vehicles properly in terms of load fill.”

RETENTION AND RECRUITMENT

Noble Foods is clearly unusually flexible in terms of its drivers’ working patterns, but does that help it retain its existing drivers or attract new ones?

“Definitely both,” Tucker said, “If a driver is working four on, four off they know they’re going to stay on that all year. With the workload we’ve got, we can ringfence that shift pattern.”

Many drivers will request a Monday to Friday working pattern, but Tucker must ensure the roster is fair and equitable for all drivers. “The chickens lay eggs every day of the week, so we’ve got to cover the seven days and it’s just agreeing that fairness” he said, “we’re pretty flexible as long as we’re getting the right numbers on each day.”

On recruiting new drivers, Tucker said the company’s existing drivers are its best asset. “The word gets around,” he said, “We run schemes where we pay people to invite a friend and get a friend to work. But if you take that system away it’s about what’s the workload is like, and they talk about the workload to their friends.”

Noble Foods focuses its drivers’ time solely on driving rather than on the movement of its stock. Where some companies expect their drivers to unload, reload and move pallets around, Noble Foods invested in electric pallet trucks and encourages warehouse staff to do the unloading and reloading wherever possible. “We want to schedule our drivers to have breaks in proper locations, so we try and minimise what work they have to do,” Tucker said, “you’re paying them to drive, not to be warehouse people.”

DIVERSIFYING THE WORKFORCE

HGV driving has long been characterised as a ‘male, pale and stale’ profession, and a recent report shows that just 2% of HGV drivers are female.

Tucker believes that the expectation for drivers to unload and move pallets may put some women off applying for HGV driving roles.

“A modern truck allows anybody to drive who’s got a licence,” he said, “You don’t need physical attributes to do that.”

Facilities and resources also come into the equation. Noble Foods has refurbished all its driver welfare areas, ensuring that its female toilets are clean and in a good condition, and has also made sure that its uniforms are suitable for women to wear.

The company’s female drivers range from a team leader who has been with the company for more than a decade to a driver who has been with the company for just a year.

“We try to make things simpler for all our drivers, so they just need to get into the truck, check their load, and drive,” Tucker said, “That environment, as long as the truck’s kept to a good standard of cleanliness, we’ve found is an open door. The real problem is encouraging more female drivers to get behind the wheel and pass the test. I think that’s the inherent problem, particularly over the last two years with the drying up of the test – that’s probably made it even more difficult when people are judging what jobs they want to do.”

INVESTING IN A MODERN FLEET

Investing in a modern fleet is critical for a professional transport operator, Tucker believes, as well as acting as a tool for driver satisfaction and retention.

“You want the vehicles to be reliable,” he said, “Eighty per cent of our drivers are there and back in a day. They’ve got a family life, they want to be home on time, to pick up the kids from school or look after their elderly relatives. The last thing they want is to be broken down somewhere because the truck isn’t reliable. Don’t spare the pennies on equipment, that would be my advice.”

Route planning software systems are also important to help ensure drivers finish on time. Modern technology means that drivers are always accountable for their actions, Tucker believes. “We’ve got trackers in the vehicle so that we know what fuel they’re using, and dash cams to keep them safe on the road,” he said.

TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

When prospective drivers approach Noble Foods about a vacancy, Tucker looks at their experience and qualifications before taking them out on a driving assessment to see how they behave behind the wheel.

“That tells us all we need to know about the quality of the individual,” Tucker said, “After about five or ten minutes of driving the vehicle, everybody relaxes a bit, they get back to normal.”

If they want to work for Noble Foods and the company wants to hire them, the new driver will spend the first week going through safe operating procedures, which are written documents about company policy.

After that, the recruit is taken out with an experienced driver for a couple of days to help them understand the farming environment. Finally, the new driver will be allowed out on the road on their own and their performance will be monitored via the telematics package.

“Eggs are quite unique,” Tucker said, “we don’t want our drivers to be driving like Lewis Hamilton, taking corners tight, it’s not racing around, it’s just nice, steady driving.”

After the first few months Tucker will review their employment, and identify what they are doing right, what they need to improve and what training they might need.

The legally mandated Driver CPC (Certificate in Professional Competence) training can be left to the driver to organise or it can be paid for by their employer.

“We took a very early stance on this that we’d do it ourselves, with proper training, accredited trainers, and a proper scheme,” Tucker said. “We plan the time, we pay for their time while they’re doing it, because it’s important, whicih is a massive but worthwhile cost. We make sure that it is organised and done in good time before the expiry date.”

SKILLS SHORTAGE ISSUES

The government has introduced a raft of measures in recent months to help ease the driver shortage, including increasing testing capacity, approving new apprenticeship standards and issuing short-term visas to EU workers. Does Tucker feel that the issue is as acute as it was six months ago?

The issue has eased for now, he believes, largely because most drivers are in work in the run up to Christmas, with very few on holiday.

Looking further ahead, however, he still has concerns about the availability of HGV drivers.

“The DVSA is doing its best in terms of getting drivers through their HGV test and the concessions that the government has made, whether they’ve been right or wrong, will allow the industry to get more people behind a Class 1 vehicle certainly,” he said, “I still believe that as we go into spring and summer next year I can’t see that massive number of drivers being available by then. I think it will take us a couple of years.”

Tucker also believes that not everyone is necessarily suited to HGV driving as a vocation: “I think you need willing employees, I think that’s the key. If people are good at driving, if you’ve got a good tractor driver or a forklift driver, I think they make good HGV drivers, but I don’t think you can make everyone a good HGV driver.”

As for the skills shortage itself, Tucker sees the recent easing of the crisis as a temporary reprieve rather than a long-term solution: “I think the skills shortage will become more acute next year than what it is now, I think it’s better now than it was this summer. But I hope we don’t go through what we’ve been through this summer next year.”

*www.noblefoods.co.uk  

Published On: 09/12/2021 16:00:38

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