Motive this week announced a major expansion of its Workforce Management solution with the launch of Driver Rewards, which is designed to help organizations engage, incentivize, and retain drivers at scale.

Motive unveiled Driver Rewards at Vision 26, the company’s annual innovation summit, this week in Nashville, Tennessee. The gathering was also an opportunity to explain several enhancements to both Motive’s AI Coach and Performance Hub.

New AI Coach capabilities extend AI-powered driver coaching beyond safety to fuel usage, compliance, and equipment health, and the newly introduced Coaching Score delivers the actionable intelligence to measure program effectiveness.

“I'm excited to share with you today some of the early results and show you where we're going from here. Over the last year, AI Coach has proven that automated intervention works at scale,” Dinesh Coca, director of product management at Motive, told the Vision26 attendees. “We've delivered over 250,000 personalized coaching sessions, giving over 100,000 hours back to your managers, and ensuring timely and consistent coaching to your field personnel.”

Coca continued, pointing out that this is not just about saving managers' time. Truly, the real goal is to improve driver behavior. And he said the data is clear.

“Drivers who actively review their AI coaching sessions see an eight times greater safety score improvement and a 50% drop in total events, with critical risks like cell phone usage dropping all the way to zero,” Coca said.

Improving Driver Retention

Driver retention, according to Coca, has become a critical challenge across the physical economy, with large fleets often seeing annual turnover as high as 90%.

Losing a single driver now costs organizations an average of almost $13,000. For a fleet with 1,000 drivers, turnover costs could add up to nearly $12 million dollars annually.

Yet in many fleets, coaching still focuses on mistakes, while recognition remains manual, inconsistent, and difficult to scale. The result is disengaged drivers which are more likely to leave.

“Too often, drivers only hear from their team when something goes wrong,” said Hemant Banavar, chief product officer at Motive. “Motive Driver Rewards automatically recognizes and reinforces the behaviors that matter most. By turning everyday performance into real-time incentives, we help organizations reduce turnover and build stronger performance cultures without adding manual work.”

SPATCO Energy Solutions, a Motive customer, implemented Driver Rewards to replace manual tracking with automated, data-driven challenges that score and track drivers’ performance in real time.

“Recognition is now consistent and scaled,” said Rodney Fetters, fleet director at SPATCO Energy Solutions.  “We started with the obvious top performers that drive high mileage and are most at risk, but now we are using the platform to improve engagement, strengthen safety, and have reduced the time our team spends managing rewards.”

Key Driver Rewards capabilities include:

• Recognition and Incentives: Automatically identifies positive driver behaviors and delivers rewards and recognition in real time.
• Customizable, Data-Driven Challenges: Create programs with tailored rules, point systems, and incentives aligned to goals like safe driving, fuel efficiency, compliance, and spend.
• Gamified Driver Engagement: Motivate drivers through leaderboards, challenges, and real-time progress tracking. Drivers can turn rewards into real money and get paid instantly to their Motive Card.
• Integrated, Global-Ready Platform: Built within Motive’s AI-powered platform, Driver Rewards supports international operations with localized units, time zones, and formatting to support expansion and enable a consistent experience across regions.

Automating Driver Incentives

“We've automated reminders to ensure that your drivers never miss a coaching moment, and my personal favorite, positive recognition. So, you can finally pat your drivers on the back,” Coca explained. “Now, when they have a clean week with no events, AI Coach reaches out to congratulate them, ensuring that your best people feel valued, not just monitored.”

Driver Rewards turns everyday performance into automated incentives. Fleet managers create data-driven challenges tied to key metrics, while the platform scores performance and updates points, badges, and leaderboards in real-time.

He explained that this year Motive is moving from simply coaching sessions to a precision coaching engine, which allows managers to have total control in choosing which behaviors and severity will trigger coaching and how frequently it gets delivered.

“You also have to motivate your employees and celebrate what's going right. Driver Rewards automates that motivation and recognition. Setting up a challenge is effortless. You choose the behaviors that impact your bottom line,” Coca said.

Tracking Progress in the Motive Driver App

Drivers can track their progress in the Motive Driver app, and teams can run multiple programs with clear rules and automated scoring. Drivers can see where they rank in the challenges, and try to improve, thereby advancing into the top tier of performers and having a chance to take home the prize, or reward.

Future Driver Rewards enhancements will expand rewards to additional behaviors such as idling and compliance, introduce new redemption options through Motive Card, and enable real-time “spot recognition” for exceptional performance.

Driver Rewards builds on Motive’s Workforce Management solution, which brings workforce operations into Motive’s centralized, AI-powered platform. By connecting drivers, vehicles, and operational data in one place, Motive helps organizations automate coaching, streamline compliance, surface risks earlier, and reduce manual processes.

Enhancements to AI Coach

New enhancements to AI Coach, the AI-powered driver-coaching product that delivers personalized feedback at scale, extend coaching beyond safety to include fuel usage, compliance, and equipment health.

With AI Coach, fleets can improve performance and reinforce the right behaviors without manual coaching. Now, an expanded avatar library offers more standard avatars for an even more personal and human performance program. But, fleets can also create avatars, even based on their fleet managers or other recognizable leaders.

While Driver Rewards reinforces positive behavior, AI Coach automates intervention and can improve performance by identifying risks, creating tailored coaching plans, and then delivering real-time guidance to drivers.

Introducing Coaching Score

Motive has also introduced Coaching Score as part of Performance Hub, the unified control tower for managing coaching, training, and rewards.

“With our new Coaching Score, you finally know if your program is working by tracking whether unwanted behavior stopped after coaching occurs,” Coca told the audience. “And AI supports you by recommending where to focus to see the greatest impact.”

Coaching Score automates measurement by tracking behavior changes following coaching sessions, allowing managers to see exactly where programs are working and where high-risk behaviors continue. AI-powered recommendations identify high-impact focus areas, while Performance Hub instantly pinpoints which coaches need support to keep their teams on track.

“2026 is the year of automation for your workforce. We've closed the loop,” explained Coca. “AI identifies the risk, AI Coach delivers the intervention, Driver Rewards then reinforces the right behaviors, and Performance Hub gives you the intelligence to continuously improve your program, your roles, and the proof that it's working. This is how Motive enables you to scale your operation and improve your bottom line.”