While the shipping industry scrambles to keep up with pent-up holiday demand, UPS is leaning on advanced technologies such as virtual reality and driving simulations to ensure its seasonal hires are adequately primed to navigate whatever situation may come their way.
The training program, known as UPS Integrad, was launched in the company’s Landover, Maryland, facility around 2007 and now spans about a dozen locations. Drawing some of its initial funding from a $1.8 million Department of Labor grant in 2006, the program is intended to drill safety procedures into new recruits to root out excessive injuries and accidents in the field.
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Over the years, UPS has tweaked the training and poured more resources into the initiative, including the implementation of virtual reality. Students of the program will partake in a slew of exercises and training stations to prepare them for real-life situations as drivers.
“It’s just all hands-on. They get the added experience of — we can’t have them all out on the road all day, so when they can do those experiences through the simulator, do the virtual. I tell everybody it’s all about reps,” Kevin Brandon, lead facilitator at UPS, told the Washington Examiner during a tour of the facility.
Delivering packages can seem like a mundane undertaking, but with thousands of workers fanning throughout the country, many will eventually wind up transporting expensive merchandise while grappling with hazardous situations on the road, driving through slick terrain with poor visibility, or walking through slippery walkways with heavy packages.
The company spends roughly $1,500 per student and has about a week to train its recruits. UPS foots the bill for the travel and hotel expenses of their students enrolled in the program. Participants are required to pass their Integrad assessments with a grade of 85% or higher to get hired as a driver.
Everyone gets the same type of training to ensure the uniformity of UPS’s workers. Since implementing Integrad, the company has seen a drop in accidents.
“[It’s] a lot of money with this investment. It’s worth it because we produce some of the safest drivers in the country — 14 billion miles of driving,” Warren Wilson, the site manager at the UPS facility in Landover, stressed to the Washington Examiner during the tour. “[We have] over 35,000 drivers with no accidents, no injuries, and you only get one week — one week of training.”
Between 2019 and March 2022, the company trained 92,991 drivers via Integrad, over 28,000 of whom were instructed in 2021, the company said. Applicants need a driver’s license for standard driving and can later vie for additional training and a commercial driver’s license to drive the company’s tractor-trailers.
During the tour, Wilson showed scuff marks on his shins from making the hop onto UPS trucks back in the 1990s after a long day’s work. His shins got nicked from time to time on deliveries by the metal rim at the bottom of the truck near the door.
Integrad instructors drill students on the importance of carefully entering UPS trucks, using the handlebars fixed on trucks to ease themselves in while ensuring they evenly distribute weight upon entrances and exits to stave off strains on the body.
Students also learn the company’s “five and 10” rule, which features 10-point commentary and five seeing habits while out in the field to identify hazards on the road and engage in defensive driving.
In the virtual reality sessions, students hone their quick-thinking skills and venture through drills in which they are tasked with spotting those hazards, such as parked cars on the sides of streets or congregations of people near roads.
Other methods of instruction include a “slips and falls” track in which students don a harness and traverse a very slippery walkway while carrying a package. Wilson emphasized the importance of maintaining good form and putting down proper footing to evade nasty falls.
“[It’s] just built on routine — the more hands-on you [are], the better you will be at the job,” student driver Logan Mitchell Jr. told the Washington Examiner during the tour.
Prior to departing on deliveries, UPS drivers are expected to do pre-checks on their vehicles to clamp down on any technical snafus in the field.
“It’s all about service,” Wilson stressed during the tour. “You’ve got to be proficient and efficient when you’re out there on road.”
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While UPS often begins to ramp up the Integrad education assembly line in June due to summer vacations taken by its seasoned employees, the company begins to brace for the holiday rush around September, according to Wilson and Brandon.
Many of those Integrad cohorts at that time are seasonal hires, but Wilson tries to impress upon them that there are opportunities to become full-time employees.
“Everyone is in charge of [their] own destiny,” he said. “We might say we want to keep 300. Out of the 300, it is going to be the best of the best. … We want the best people. We want the best candidates who follow the methods.”
