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Ryder Launches Military Veteran Buddy Program

[ November 20, 2015   //   ]

Ryder System, Inc. has announced the launch of its Veteran Buddy Program, pairing current Ryder employees who are military veterans with new veteran employees. The program is designed to help ease the transition from military to civilian life, which can be a major challenge for recently separated veterans returning to the workforce.
“Military veterans come from a very organized, structured life, with clear direction, career paths, and job descriptions, as well as high levels of unit collaboration,” said Patrick Pendergast, Group Director of Recruiting Services, Ryder. “They leave the military with a desire to become a part of an organization that has a clear mission and purpose. Ryder is an organization that matches well with these attributes, which is why we have formalized our efforts around veteran hiring in order to encompass all of these aspects. We want every transitioning veteran to feel welcome and to know that they are part of a team.”
Ryder has dedicated exclusive recruiting resources toward hiring veterans and has customized its online recruiting site to enable veterans to enter their military job classification and have their qualifications automatically matched with Ryder job openings.
This new program takes these efforts a step further once the recruiting process is completed. Veteran new hires are assigned a Ryder military veteran “buddy” who will be available to help them assimilate to their new work environment. Ryder has found that simple gestures such as showing a new veteran around the office or shop and being available to answer questions can help the new veteran employee settle into his/her new environment with ease. When the onboarding process is successful, the company has found an improvement in turnover among veteran employees.
Ryder currently has more than 2,700 veteran employees in the U.S. Among those, 400 have been selected to participate in the program at Ryder locations in the following states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and West Virginia. The program is expected to continue to grow as the Company gains more transitioning veterans.
Ryder is a member of the Veterans Employment Advisory Council and is a corporate partner with Hiring Our Heroes, FASTPORT, andHire Heroes USA. Since joining Hiring Our Heroes in November 2011, Ryder has increased the percentage of veterans among its US workforce of more than 26,700 employees from 8% to more than 10%.

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