Ryder’s customers trust us with critical business functions.
They trust us to ensure that their products are delivered on time, their fleets are safe and well-maintained, and their logistics operations run safely and efficiently. That requires a workforce that is dedicated to professionalism, operational excellence, and customer service. As our industry faces talent shortages for drivers and warehouse employees, as well as high demand for technicians, our customers also rely on us to hire, train, and retain top talent. That’s why we are committed to providing our employees with a safe, challenging, and rewarding work environment.
We strive to create a high-performance culture for our team that comprises the industry’s brightest logistics engineers, most experienced technicians, warehouse workers, and safest drivers. To achieve this, we believe it is critical to embrace diverse perspectives and experiences, and ensure that employees get the benefits, training, and supportive environment they need to grow and excel in their fields. Our employees’ diversity of perspectives fuels the innovative solutions and operational excellence that have been the bedrock of Ryder’s success for 85 years.
For the past four years, Ryder has been recognized among America’s Best Employers by Forbes. In 2018, Ryder was recognized by Forbes as one of the “Best Employers for Women”. The Company has also been named for the past five years as one of Recruit Military’s Most Valuable Employers for Military, formerly presented by CivilianJobs.com. The award is given to select employers for their recruiting, training, and retention plans that best serve military service members and veterans.
Our Approach
Our talent initiatives—led by our Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO)—drive a high-performing and diverse work environment. We aim to recruit, develop, and engage an inclusive culture that:
- Respects our employees and customers;
- Puts thought and care into how we serve our employees and communities;
- Delivers personalized services that inspire employees to reach their full potential;
- Welcomes new perspectives and ideas; and
- Encourages collaboration and innovative thinking.
Ryder has developed and implemented equal employment opportunity and affirmative action policies and programs, which are designed to ensure that all qualified applicants and employees are treated without regard to such factors as race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other reason prohibited by law. Our suppliers, vendors and subcontractors are informed of our adherence to such policies through our EEO Notice to Suppliers and our Supplier Terms and Conditions, both which are available on our website.
Our Human Resources and recruiting teams work closely to identify talent needs and strategies, as well as to manage diversity initiatives. Annually, the CHRO presents employee diversity statistics and initiatives to Ryder’s Corporate Governance and Nominating Committee of the Board of Directors.
Driving a High-Performance Culture
We are committed to hiring extraordinary people and engaging them through challenging and rewarding opportunities. The consistent recognition by some of the most prestigious business publications reflects not only our portfolio of premier transportation and logistics solutions, but serves as a testament to our thousands of dedicated employees around the world who embody Ryder’s customer-centric values. Our operation is only as good as the field and support staff that keeps it running. Throughout our company, our people are committed to moving business forward as efficiently as possible. Ryder is committed to making sure our employees receive the diverse experience, compensation, independence, and advancement opportunities they need to grow.
We invest in our employees by offering comprehensive health, welfare and retirement programs, along with wellness programs and well-being initiatives. These programs include medical, prescription, dental, and vision benefits; life and disability insurance; a 401(k) retirement savings plan, including company match; behavioral health, and Employee Assistance Program services; and community outreach programs, such as United Way and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Miami. For more information, see our Careers Page.
Ryder works with our major health care partners to provide employees with the tools and resources needed to easily learn about their health plan services. These include mobile apps, benefit videos, and comprehensive web portals, which offer information on health plan basics, provider search tools, and how to use the network to minimize the cost of care. We offer a suite of health promotion services, including seasonal flu shots, mobile mammograms, smoking cessation, health fairs, personalized health coaching, and chronic care management, among others. Our digital health platform features a suite of online and mobile solutions that help employees manage their health and wellbeing.
Moving forward, we will continue to adjust our offerings as needed and listen to the feedback of our employees to identify new opportunities to attract, retain, and develop our talent.
Training and Development
The best are always driven to be better. Ryder employs the top talent in our industry. To retain that talent, it is necessary to offer them challenging and rewarding opportunities to build their skills, stay abreast of the latest industry trends and best practices, and grow in their careers. Ryder’s employee development program starts at onboarding, on day one, impacts every Ryder employee throughout the company by focusing on three key areas: supporting our people, supporting our business, and supporting our culture.
Leadership Development
Ryder offers several leadership development programs to help to enhance the careers of our best talent. These include several management trainee programs that provide early-career individuals an opportunity to build a great career.
Ryder also has programs to support current and up-and-coming leaders across the business. Leadership development offerings include courses on Coaching and Leadership Essentials, Targeted Competency Workshops, Executive Coaching, and New Sales Leader Training.
In 2017, Ryder launched an Executive Leadership Program (ELP) focused on areas critical to the development and success of talent across the enterprise, the ELP includes a three-day event at Ryder’s headquarters, where participants gain exposure to executive leaders, as well as virtual sessions and assessments covering leadership topics. Additionally, we track high potential development candidates at the director level and above, and include targets for percentage of candidates ready for succession and percentage of candidates enrolled in a developmental activity. Company performance toward these targets are included on the CEO’s annual scorecard as a measure of succession planning. In 2018, we expanded existing leadership development programs to include focused career content for emerging female leaders.
Employee Engagement
Our employees determine Ryder’s success, and we know that their overall well-being and level of engagement directly contribute to their ability to bring their best selves to work. We ensure the health, well-being, and engagement of our employees by listening to their feedback, providing learning and competitive opportunities, and providing the wellness resources they need to thrive.
One of the best ways to continuously improve our culture is to listen to employee feedback. By engaging our workforce and promoting an agile culture, we are better positioned to meet our strategic goals. Ryder utilizes multiple channels to measure and increase employee engagement, including:
- Providing employees with new technologies and tools that improve the employee experience;
- Enhancing our online learning management system to drive more self-development; and
- Leveraging pulse surveys to quickly assess engagement and drive actions in real time.
Highlight Story: Driver of the Year Award
Truck driving is at the core of Ryder’s DNA. It’s where we started, and it’s still at the center of everything we do. Ryder employs 9,500 drivers, and we hold them to the most rigorous standards of safety, professionalism, and customer commitment. The drivers who most embody these qualities achieve one of Ryder’s highest honors – they are named a Ryder Driver of the Year. The Driver of the Year recognition program is one of Ryder’s oldest and most prestigious. Nominees are evaluated by a committee that includes customers, executives, safety experts, and fellow professional drivers. The winners, many of whom have logged several million miles on the road without an accident or incident, are chosen for demonstrating exemplary safety performance, customer service, and citizenship throughout their careers and home life. In 2018, Bill Phipps from SCS and Carlos Aceituno from DTS were named Ryder’s 45th annual Drivers of the Year and inducted into the Ryder Hall of Fame.
Bill Phipps from Supply Chain Solutions and Carlos Aceituno from Dedicated Transportation Solutions
Highlight Story: Ryder Top Tech
Vehicle technology changes rapidly in our industry, and Ryder’s technicians must stay on the forefront of that technology. In order to keep our trucks and our customers’ trucks operating safely and reliably, and to maintain our status of having the industry’s best uptimes, Ryder maintains a culture of continuous training and improvement among our technicians. To encourage our techs to strive to be the best, each year we host the Ryder Top Tech competition. Technicians across the company are invited to compete in multiple rounds of written and practical tests to evaluate their maintenance knowledge. The top scorers go on location to compete against each other in a series of difficult maintenance challenges to determine who is Ryder’s top technician. In 2018, eight technicians traveled to San Antonio, TX, to face off. In the end, Christopher Barnett of our Hebron, KY, location was crowned the Ryder Top Tech.
Chris Barnett of Kentucky Winner of Ryder Top Tech 2018
Building an Inclusive Culture
At Ryder, our vision is to create a work environment that is supportive, collaborative, and values individual contributors. We understand the value diversity brings to our Company. The diverse backgrounds and perspectives of our workforce help us to better understand and respond to our customers’ needs, leading to increased profitability and long-term value.
Diversity in the workplace also contributes to our ability to attract and retain top talent in an industry that has not historically been very diverse. In 2018, long-haul drivers were on average 49 years old, 93 percent male, and mainly white. Most have driven more than 20 years with many expected to retire in the next decade. Historically, our industry did not do enough to attract and appeal to minorities. For instance, vehicle cabs are often designed for male drivers, creating potential safety risks for their female counterparts. Our focus on Military and Veteran Recruiting and Women in Trucking have been important ways in which we strive to increase our access to the best talent in the industry.
Our Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Council, comprised of 11 cross-functional leaders, guides Ryder in achieving three key goals: remaining an employer that attracts diverse talent, developing the diverse talent we already have, and driving innovation and growth through diversity of thought. The D&I Council’s role is to:
- Partner with the Office of Diversity and Inclusion to recommend and develop D&I initiatives in support of the company’s vision
- Model diverse and inclusive behaviors and champion the same in the organization
- Assess and continuously improve execution of D&I initiatives
- Drive accountability for programs and results
- Capture the voice of diverse employees
Our mandatory course “The Inclusion Journey: Delivering on the Potential of a Diverse Workforce,” provides employees the skills to work effectively with people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, and values. All supervisors and managers also participate in a follow-up workshop “Continuing the Journey,” which provides insights into managing a diverse workforce. We continue to prioritize strategies that encourage our people to feel valued, respected, included, and encouraged.
Diversity Initiatives at Ryder
To further promote diversity in our workforce, Ryder participates in annual career expositions and conferences with the National Black MBA Association and Prospanica (Association of Hispanic Professionals). We also partner with INROADS to place diverse college students into internships with Ryder. We support the diversity of our suppliers via Ryder’s Small Business and Supplier Diversity Program, which provides more opportunities for companies certified by the Small Business Administration to work with Ryder. This program also enables Ryder to grow our relationships with local communities, meet all customer expectations, and strengthen and expand our supplier base.
One way we measure the inclusivity of our culture is through the Corporate Equality Index (CEI) rating, conducted by the Human Rights Campaign. CEI scores are calculated based on a company’s policies, resources, and education to support LGBTQ workers. Ryder received a CEI score of 85—out of a possible 100—from the Human Rights Campaign in 2018.
Diversity Performance
|
|
2016
|
2017
|
2018
|
|---|---|---|---|
Overall Diversity Representation* |
47% |
50% |
52% |
Diverse Hires |
54% |
59% |
63% |
Millennial Representation of Ryder’s Workforce |
30% |
34% |
36% |
*Defined as gender and ethnic diversity
As a leading provider of transportation and logistics services, it is important for us to ensure that the makeup of our workforce is in line with industry standards. Ryder conducts internal benchmarking to compare segments of our workforce with relevant data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Among select industry job functions in the United States, Ryder consistently meets or exceeds the BLS representation for diversity and women in the workforce.
Supporting Women
Ryder is focused on supporting women in transportation to address the historic gap in female representation in our industry. According to Women in Trucking, less than 8 percent of the driver population is female and women comprise only 21 percent of transportation, storage, and distribution managers.
Our Women’s Leadership Forum (WLF), created in 2011, supports the development of women leaders through networking events, career development programs, and collaborative activities. In the past two years, we’ve enhanced the capabilities of our WLF programs to reach more women in remote locations, including in the field, via virtual outreach technologies. We’ve also increased our focus on career development and leadership presence, helping our women leaders:
- Exude confidence with every interaction
- Demonstrate courage to speak up, and share ideas and convictions
- Deliver clear and confident messages
In 2017 and 2018, we hosted over a dozen WLF events focused on career development across the U.S., reaching more than 250 women leaders. We also hosted our first international WLF events in Mexico and plan to continue expanding these programs through Mexico and the U.K. in 2019.
At the same time, we are working to make trucking safer for women. Since 2015, we have provided customers with a female-friendly vehicle package for lease, including 15 unique specifications that make the truck more ergonomically friendly to female drivers. Our aim is to attract more women to the industry while making vehicles safer and easier to operate for a broader range of drivers.
Ryder sits on the Board of The Women in Trucking Association, a non-profit organization that works to encourage the employment of women in the trucking industry, promote their accomplishments, and minimize obstacles they may face. Through this partnership, we have identified better strategies for attracting, retaining, and promoting more women, which as also helped us address the driver shortage. We also partner with the Commonwealth Institute and the Society of Women Engineers to further expand our capabilities in support of women.
Military & Veteran Recruiting
We are grateful to the men and women who make the extraordinary commitment to serve our nation, and we recognize the value that skilled veterans bring to our team. This is why we have long looked to the military as a key talent pool for new hires. With assistance from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Hiring Our Heroes and FASTPORT programs, Ryder mentors and educates numerous veteran military personnel and their spouses about employment in trucking and working at Ryder.
Veteran
Hires 324
Veteran
Hires 7752
Hiring our heroes provides opportunities to engage with the military at hiring events across the United States, enabling us the recruit the best and brightest of our nation’s service members. Ryder became a corporate sponsor of Hiring Our Heroes’ Fellowship Program in 2014, offering a 12-week unpaid internship that provides Fellows—senior non-commissioned and junior to mid-grade officers—with experience in the civilian workforce while they transition out of the military. The program provides the opportunity to sharpen their skills for future employment, and gives Ryder extended exposure to each candidate. Through these partnerships, we have hired 7,752 veterans since 2011 (as of December 31, 2018), increasing the percentage of veterans in our workforce to over 10 percent. We also renewed our commitment to participating on the Veterans Employment Advisory Council for 2019, an initiative that focuses on enhancing collaboration between public and private sectors to improve career opportunities for veterans.
Ryder provides a military hiring landing page that serves to help veterans match their skills with open positions at Ryder. We also pair current Ryder employees who are military veterans with new veteran employees via our Veteran Buddy Program, helping to ease the transition from military to civilian life. Our Women Veterans Task Force, established in 2016, focuses on attracting female veterans into the transportation industry and to Ryder.
The Ryder Diesel Technician Training Program offers new veterans training to become diesel technicians at military installations throughout the U.S. Participating service members begin their training four months before transitioning out of the military, enabling them to begin their career at Ryder before completing their term of service. Currently, we offer Diesel Technician training approximately every 16 weeks at two U.S. bases, and plan to expand the training to six additional bases in 2019. To date, 91 transitioning service members have taken jobs at Ryder through the Diesel Technician Training Program.
Ryder was awarded the Hiring our Heroes – Lee Anderson Veteran & Military Spouse Employment Award in November 2017 for overall excellence in hiring and retaining veterans and their spouses.