Why Mentorship and Coaching Are the Missing Link in Fleet Performance

Your Team Doesn't Just Need Software. They Need Support.

In today's fast-moving fleet world, most teams aren't struggling because they lack tools. They're struggling from lack of support. 

That support doesn't come from another feature or policy. The support fleet professionals need comes from mentorship and coaching. 

And if you want your fleet to succeed, this is no longer options. 

Mentorship is quickly becoming a fleet performance essential, and here's how you can make it work in your shop. 

1. Mentorship Accelerates Learning and Retention

Did you know that new employees ramp up faster when paired with a seasoned mentor? And senior staff feel valued when asked to take new employees under their wings and share their knowledge. Seems like a win-win. 

Fleet mentorship programs also mean:

• Faster onboarding
• Fewer early mistakes
• More confident technicians
• Longer employee retention

If you've been struggling to get your talented employees to stay, creating a mentorship program could be a great way to show how much you value them, for both new and seasoned employees. 

Leveraging tools like RTA Fleet360's Fleet Wiki can also help you capture institutional knowledge that mentors can use during training. 

2. Coaching Builds Trust and Engagement

Mentorship isn't just about learning tasks and procedures. It's about building relationships and trust between your team members. 

When someone is coached (and not just managed), they:

• Feel seen and heard
• Are better are receiving constructive feedback
• Build confidence in their role
• Stay longer because they feel valued

On a recent episode of The Fleet Success Show, former fleet manager and RTA's VP of Product and Consulting, Marc Canton, shared how requests for mentorship from fleet customers have gone up over the last few years, and those teams are sticking around longer as a result. 

3. Leaders Aren't Born. They're Trained

Many technicians want to move up the fleet leader, but don't know how. Or that they can. 

Mentorship helps techs understand the different career opportunities available to them within the organization, along with helping them:

• Learn what leadership looks like
• Practice coaching peers
• Prepare for supervisory roles

It's time to start training and growing your leaders from the inside. 

4. Coaching Doesn't Require a Consultant. It Starts with Your Team

Despite what others might tell you, you don't actually need to hire a consultant or a mentorship coach to start your mentoring program. 

There are tons of free resources available online to help you get started. Our best advice is to start simple:

• Identify your top-performing veterans to be mentors
• Match them with new hires or future leaders
• Set monthly check-ins and expectations
• Create a mentorship SOP

It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. 

5. Mentorship Helps Capture "Tribal Knowledge"

Every shot has that one person who knows everything (at RTA, we call him Steve the Fleet Whisperer). And when they retired, decades of insight and processes go with them. 

But with a mentorship program in place:

• Knowledge will transfer before retirements and exits
• New leaders are trained while they still have guidance from experienced leaders
• Your operations is more resilient when turnover happens

You can't stop turnover from happening, but you can prevent all of your institutional knowledge from walking out the door. 

6. Coaching Reduces Performance and Compliance Gaps

How many times have you had to discipline or deal with the same issues, over and over again, because your team wasn't trained correctly (or at all) from the start?

Instead of reprimanding employees for the same issues, you can use coaching to:

• Explore the root cause of the issue and create appropriate training to avoid it in the future
• Reinforce policies with the right context, so your team understands why they should or shouldn't do things a certain way
• Support behavior changes and reward safe actions

Make Mentorship a Core Part of Your Culture

If you want your fleet to have higher performance, better retention, and smoother transitions, you need to create a mentorship program. 

It doesn't have to be complex, it just has to exist and be consistent. Start small. Pair one mentor with one mentee and see how it goes, then build your program from there. 

If you're interested in more information about coaching and mentorship, check out this episode of The Fleet Success Show.