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Industries Evolve as Women Turn to Fleet Management and More
The Role of Women in Fleet Management, Logistics and Automotive
As the world watches the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, all eyes are on the athletes and many of them are women. With fierce competitors like phenom Chloe Kim, multiple gold-medalist, Mikaela Shiffrin and Olympic veteran Lindsay Vonn, the United States is just one nation celebrating women in sports. In fact, it seems that women are bring celebrated on a global scale, and it is all very positive. Even the Association of National Advertisers is out to promote the power and success of women with a campaign to eliminate bias against women from advertising and media by launching #SeeHer. The initiative comes on the heels of a two-day United State of Women Summit that put focus particularly on women in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The ANA’s effort is to address how women and girls are portrayed in the media.
“We know that the right advertising environment for women can improve ad effectiveness by as much as 30%,” ANA CEO Bob Liodice said in a statement. “So, there is a business imperative to truthfully and accurately portray women and girls. More importantly, it’s the right thing to do.”
“We need to show our daughters that nothing is beyond their reach,” said Unilever VP-media and digital engagement Gail Tifford, one of the marketers leading the effort.
It seems female stereotypes are being positively confronted in every industry from science and engineering to fleet management and mechanics. On National Public Radio’s Marketplace, Kai Ryssdal and Bridget Bodnar recently reported on Patrice Banks. With an engineering background, Patrice had a career as a failure analyst for DuPont. That career changed one day when she was looking for a female mechanic in her hometown of Philadelphia, PA. When she failed to find one, despite frustrations with her own lack of knowledge, she decided to take on the responsibility herself. She left her six-figure job to become a qualified mechanic and opened her own shop, The Girls Auto Clinic Repair Center. Patrice has trained and hired other female mechanics and most of her customers are women. In addition, she has written a book that caters to her female audience, Girls Auto Clinic Glove Box Guide. It wasn’t a typical fall back. Although her career at DuPont and her engineering credential could have guided her into the study of fuel management or fuel analysis, it wasn’t the complex systems that interested her. She started by writing a blog that would teach women how to do things that men typically do, or women pay them to do. When she asked her female audience what they wanted to learn, the most common category was cars. These women wanted to learn about fixing their own cars. So, when she could not find a female expert on cars to help her with the blog, she decided to become that expert.
“I could not find female mechanics, so I thought, I’m going to go back to school and learn how to work on cars, because I knew that there was an opportunity to help women, to provide them with information that they need and that that market was big”.
— Patrice Banks
The automotive field is just one of many male dominated industries that women are entering, but Transportation and Utilities is the category with the largest growth in shares of any industry. Over the last decade, the trucking industry has evolved considerably where gender diversity is concerned, with women stepping into roles from fleet management and logistics, to fleet software development and engineering.
Even with an undergraduate degree, Sharon Nader could not find a job. She decided to take a chance at tuck driving and after over two decades, she has not looked back. Her journey started as a casual conversation with her husband, Joe, a truck driver of 20 years. As she was between jobs, she suggested that she join him on the road. That casual suggestion lead to a Class A Commercial driver’s license which legally allowed Sharon to drive a commercial motor vehicle weighing 26,001 pounds (primarily a tractor-trailer). Sharon admits that in the beginning, it was a challenge as the trucks were large and difficult to shift, but as the industry has evolved so too has the equipment and with automated transmissions, women can drive as easily as men. Sharon graduated with a bachelor’s degree but after 10 years of driving, she can’t imagine doing anything else. The flexibility that the job offers, and the travel are obvious perks. Sharon and her husband have seen the entire country and Canada more than once. However, Sharon also admits that, aside from her husband, male drivers are still unfamiliar with how best to collaborate with their female colleagues.
“They want to help women drivers out, but as females in the industry we need to take responsibility for our work. We’re having a positive influence on the equipment and introducing new ideas to make truck driving even better”.
— Sharon Nader
She is hopeful that more women will join her in the profession and encourages them to do the research in order to have a clear understanding of what the profession entails and what options are there. Beyond everything, Sharon highlights these 4 things.
- Be prepared to work hard
- Truck driving is NOT a sightseeing tour
- Performance and safety are key
- Choose a company with positive culture and proven track record
As Sharon suggests, male dominated sectors like fleet solutions, transportation and logistics can be challenging to maneuver if you are a woman, but as these fields evolve, more equal employment rates between men and women will take hold, especially important in the logistics sector where there is a more considerable gap than most other industries. But as always, with innovation and change, so too comes progress.
Numerous scientific studies have shown that gender diversity in the workforce not only fosters collaboration, understanding, and tolerance, but also boosts competitiveness, productivity, and corporate social responsibility.
In the past, the fleet management and logistics arena has been male dominated because of its association with physical labor. However, advancement in technology, automation and robotics has provided a more accessible entry into the field, and women are stepping up to take advantage of this rapidly growing sector due to saturation of the online retail market. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Trade, Transportation, and Utilities industry is the second largest employer of women, after manufacturing. In 2017, the industry employed over 11 million women, registering a 3.9% increase from 2006. While these numbers may seem positive, of the 7.7 million workers in the US Transportation & Utilities sector, women constitute just 22.6% – indicating that there is plenty of room and opportunity for growth. Recent statistics also acknowledge that growth is connected to the technology, engineering and R&D associated with the developing transportation arena and the partner networks associated with the field as well. Women are not only attracted to these tech opportunities, they are excelling in these roles.
Women Driving Innovation within Fleet Payment Solutions
Our own CEO at WEX Melissa D. Smith won the Woman Driving Innovation in Payments award at the 2014 Innovation Project in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The first of its kind, the award is given to the top female leader in the fields of payments and commerce innovation. As the parent company of EFS, WEX and Melissa are focused on maximizing data, technology and payments in the trucking industry making fleet management and fleet solutions more efficient, informed and growing. The key element of the company’s leadership has been its proprietary fuel and vehicle maintenance networks, one of the largest in North America. However, as the company has grown they have also developed flexible fleet card solutions like the Fleet One Edge Card that caters to smaller fleets and the Mastercard Fleet Card, the single card, dual network solution that leverages control for fuel purchasing, combined with Mastercard’s wide acceptance network for non-fuel purchases such as T&E expenses and emergency repairs. The company’s innovative approach also offers payroll/settlement cards, data and analytics, regulatory and compliance tools, mobile solutions and vendor payments. Most importantly, the system’s software also enables fleet managers to control purchases in the field and provide data and analysis tools to run their operations and control costs more efficiently. WEX and EFS is proof that it is not just logistics that provides a place for women in trucking, it is also the partners that the logistics company employs to service their fleets. EFS is just one example of how women are contributing in the freight carrier and fleet management arena and there are corporations evolving daily in the same effort.
Support in Growing the Transportation, Logistics and Fleet Management Workforce
Additionally, there are organizations across the country put into place to support gender diversity and a balanced workforce in the Transportation and Logistics arena. One organization taking initiative in transportation workforce development is the National Network for Transportation Workforce. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration, the network is comprised of 5 regional centers and housed within the following University campuses.
- University of Memphis
- University of Vermont
- University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Montana State University
- California State University – Long Beach
These centers coordinate programs to address workforce reentry, workforce transition or career advancement. These programs highlight opportunities, required education, training and strategies for success. NNTW is also partnering with organization to identify solutions for growing the profession. Vaco Logistics is one company working closely with the Southeast Transportation Workforce Center, housed within the University of Memphis, to provide a national focus on attracting women to the profession. And it is no surprise that women in the millennial generation are a target because of their interest and knowledge of emerging technologies. This purpose driven population is also most interested in the positive impact an industry can make so, the NNTW effort also makes clear the beneficial force that the transportation profession can bring to our modernized world.
While the research is proactive, and the results are in progress, we still have a long way to go. But as the world experiences the 2018 Winter Olympic games, celebrating the female athletes along with the #SeeHer initiative, we can be more than optimistic. We can be proud of women like WEX CEO, Melissa D. Smith, who is already helping to drive an industry, and we can look forward to the enormous potential that exists for women in fleet management, logistics and transportation along with every other untapped industry with which women hope to not only contribute, but influence and lead.
Resources:
http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/ana-launches-seeher-campaign-improve-portrayal-women/304555/
National Public Radio
https://www.npr.org/2013/05/02/179275392/lady-mechanic-initiative-trains-women-for-the-best-job
https://www.pymnts.com/in-depth/2014/wex-to-drive-healthcare-payments/
https://schneiderjobs.com/blog/driver/women-in-trucking
http://www.logisticsmgmt.com/article/why_should_women_work_in_logistics
http://www.inboundlogistics.com/cms/article/attracting-more-women-to-the-transportation-profession/