Let me start by congratulating all the winners and runners up at this year’s New Zealand Road Transport Industry Awards.
It was a fantastic evening and it was great to have the opportunity to celebrate some of our industry’s outstanding achievers alongside so many of their peers.
Jeff Mear from Fruehauf New Zealand received the VTNZ Supreme Contribution to NZ Road Transport Award.
Jeff’s career has been focused on building high quality equipment, and as he said when collecting the award, “doing things right by his customers and not leading people down the wrong path”.
John Essex from TR Master Drive Services was runner-up for the award, deserving recognition for what he had done for driver training over many years.
The Castrol Truck Driver Hero award went to Rex Temm, from Riordan & West in Te Awamutu.
Rex saved a young toddler he saw wandering along the side of the road on State Highway One near Tokoroa.
It was a close call with a logging truck coming in the other direction and without Rex’s intervention there was likely to have been a very tragic outcome.
Well done Rex, our industry and community salute you.
What was really inspiring about the night and a great shot in the arm for the industry were the impressive young women who won the night’s other three awards.
Carla Seymour Mansell, director of Seymours Transport Services in Gisborne took the EROAD Outstanding Contribution to Health and Safety Award; Ayna Shamim, owner of Angel Transport in Auckland received the first ever Teletrac Navman Outstanding Contribution by a Woman in the Road Transport Industry Award; and Summer Ratima Thompson, from G J Sheldrake in Tokoroa was EROAD Young Driver of the Year.
Carla, Ayna and Summer show off a different side to our industry and are not what people expect from trucking in New Zealand.
Young people are the future of freight transport and we need to support women like this to help fill the shoes of our industry’s outstanding leaders.
Staying on the young person theme, one of the sessions I enjoyed the most at the recent RTF Conference was that by generational recruitment and leadership expert Melanie Boyle.
Responding to the industry’s pressing need to recruit younger talent, Melanie presented us with some fairly stark facts when it came to what millennials, particularly millennial women, want from a career.
“They want to know they are valued, what their purpose is, and why their job is important.
They do not want to feel stifled through a lack of professional development,” Melanie explained.
“Equality and diversity are their big things.
Before they apply to work for you they are going to Google you, they are going to walk all over your website and your social media and they want to see evidence that you really believe in equality and diversity and you see the benefits of having women in your workforce.
And if they don’t see it then they are unlikely to apply.”
Melanie further emphasised the importance of changing from a “command and control” type of leadership style to a more collaborative approach to get the best out of younger staff.
“Millennials don’t want a manager or a boss, they want a coach.
They want someone who is invested in their growth and development and is helping them be the best they can.
They want to collaborate and contribute.
They want to make you successful by you allowing them to help you.
They want meaning in their work and to know that they are doing something that is bigger than them.”
I totally acknowledge how big of a change some of these ideas are to how our industry has traditionally operated.
However, as Melanie pointed out, in 10 years’ time millennials will be 75% of the workforce so we either get on-board, or we will continue to get left behind by other competing industries more adaptable than our own.
Let me briefly touch on the $7.5 billion surplus that we now know the Government is sitting on.
The message from our industry is very simple – start spending that money on roads.
We are a nation whose economy relies on good quality roads to move things up and down our narrow, mountainous country.
Yet our roading system is crumbling, new roads have been scrapped and all we have to show for the last two years is the paralysis of politicians.
It’s time to get some shovels in the ground and spend that taxpayer’s money on what taxpayers need, which are better roads and transport networks.
If there is anything that came out of the recent local election results it is that people have had enough of do-nothing politicians promising big and delivering nothing when it comes to transport.
The current central Government members should heed that warning.
Finally, I want to congratulate Nicole Rosie, who has been appointed as NZTA’s new chief executive.
I look forward to working with her as she addresses some of the agency’s significant roading and regulatory challenges.
