Groendyke knew they needed to do everything in their power to attract and retain their most important asset:  their drivers.  Working with Eleos, Groendyke developed a driver app that vastly improves communication with their drivers. Their custom app allows them to maintain constant communication with drivers with information ranging from corporate messages to load information to dispatch alerts and payroll inquiries. The options are virtually limitless.

With the app, Groendyke is able to send messages in a format very similar to the messaging apps familiar to most drivers. New messages are highlighted and organized in an intuitive way making adoption simple and effective. 

When covid first broke out, Groendyke was able to quickly implement proactive messaging in their app to inform drivers about what the company was doing, and why. Being able to speak to drivers in an effective way meant drivers weren’t left in the dark during this turbulent time—leading to a much lower turnover rate than anticipated. “The drivers told us, it’s great to know where we are with the cleaning policies, where we are with essential workers, what our stance was on the vaccine policies, and how we were going to weather the storm,” Nakvinda says. “Having that communication out to them of why we were doing the things we were doing helped retention quite a bit.”

The app also enables messages to be marked as to-dos—a huge win from an operational standpoint.  For the first time, Groendyke can track when a driver has completed a task or viewed a piece of content. Drivers are also given an organized list of tasks needed to be completed. A win-win for the organization and the driver.

In addition to texting options, Groendyke’s custom app supports rich media formats such as video and graphic images. Groendyke has used this capability to develop a media library to give drivers access to critical company messages, training, and compliance materials wherever they are – in the cab or through an integrated mobile app when they are somewhere else.

“A lot of it had to do with driver retention and driver belonging,” IT Director Cory Nakvinda says, “bringing back that, Hey, you’re part of this Groendyke family. And what is the company doing? I talked to drivers recently, and they said, You know, six years ago, we wouldn’t have known that we acquired the last two companies that we did. Now they know it before we acquired them, because we’ve actually sent videos from the presidents of the companies we’re buying, with a kind of state-of-the-union address.”

This has worked so well that Groendyke has now developed their video messaging system into what they call the “GTI Mobile Minute:” a regular, short video delivered via the driver app, covering new items they want their people to know about.  Constant communication has helped drivers feel more connected to the company and a part of something much bigger than themselves.

The communication system Groendyke built on Eleos has been so successful that they have now taken it a step further, implementing it for all their employees as a corporate communications tool. This has allowed them to move completely away from email, in favor of a communication method that is simultaneously more productive and more user-friendly.