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Sustainably employable drivers need good leaders. In the transport sector, 'leadership' is not always given substance, discovered Wouter. Interviews with drivers, managers and directors show that it is not always clear to drivers who their manager is. They rarely, if ever, have performance reviews. Wouter: "There is a culture of ‘less talk, more action'. What we call 'the soft side' of an organisation, the human side, is actually missing."

Why is that a problem?

"If you want to retain people in the sector, it needs that human side. We know from research that employees, drivers in this case, leave less if they feel more connected. If there is a human side in an organisation, you can also spot problems that could lead to absenteeism faster and intervene accordingly. In addition, the attitude of managers towards employees is also important. After all, it has an effect on how drivers themselves think about their profession and career."

So the key to sustainably employable drivers lies with managers?

"Exactly. Good managers are indispensable. To facilitate their professional development, we developed a learning community. Managers of drivers from various transport companies in the Southeast Netherlands, led by a facilitator, discussed with each other various aspects of leadership with a view to sustainable employability. Over six months, they met six times. Each session took place at a different company. So they visited each other all the time."

What did this learning community achieve?

"The evaluation showed that the managers started thinking differently about employees and how to approach them. They also learnt how to be more sensitive to signals from drivers. The learning community is clearly the beginning of a professionalisation drive."

Can you give an example?

"In the transport sector, planners are very important. They divide the tasks among the drivers and decide who drives where, when. They are also the people with whom drivers have the most contact. At one of the companies, they told a number of planners: you are only going to focus on the people themselves. Sit down at every coffee table and pick up signals. And what turned out: the absenteeism rate dropped from 11 to 6 per cent."

What is the social added value of this research?

"The Sector Institute plans to scale up the learning community to improve the learning culture at companies on sustainable employability. So it has a direct impact on the sector. Furthermore, I hope more attention will be paid to the professional group of truck drivers, in line with the work of labour sociologist Fabian Dekker. He wrote the book 'Factory work. On the forgotten working class' in which he shows that this 'forgotten class' still exists and is a legitimate part of our workforce. It is often looked down upon. The same goes for truck drivers. It is a stigmatised profession. I also want to show that they are people who do incredibly good and important work."

How did you end up in the trucking industry? An old boyhood dream?

"No, actually it's a coincidence. I responded to a vacancy - the research is an NWO-funded project of the 'Future of Work' programme. On the other hand, maybe it's not just a coincidence. My mother has worked in logistics for forty years. First she organised freight by land, now by sea. Maybe it had to be that way after all."