Improve driver safety, achieve compliance and control costs with our straightforward, cost-effective driver risk management model.
If you have responsibility for a fleet or for workplace health and safety, you’ll know that for each employee who drives on behalf of your business, there are several key steps involved in assessing and managing their risk, in accordance with a robust safety policy. Managing driver risk is essential to ensure that employees are as safe as they can be, and that your business is fulfilling its obligations to health and safety law.
Common fleet safety challenges for SMEs
Checking licences
The basic check to ensure that someone is legal to drive. Around 1 in 6 drivers in the UK has endorsements on their licence, some of which might invalidate insurance or be indicators of risky behaviour.
Health & Safety Legislation
The Health & Safety at Work Act 1974, as well as a raft of supporting legislation, requires that businesses apply robust risk management processes applicable to fleet policy.
Assessing driver risk
Each driver’s knowledge, attitude and skill level will affect their likelihood of incidents. Identifying high-risk drivers and taking early action is an important stage in preventing serious incidents.
Vehicle downtime
Incomplete jobs, rescheduling missed appointments, and hire of replacement vehicles and staff all have a financial and operational cost.
Cost of collisions
Even minor collisions can make a significant dent in company finances, with end-of-contract charges for damage to leased vehicles commonly incurring bills of £4-500 per vehicle.
Responsibility
Who is responsible for the administration and enforcement of fleet policy in your business? With many businesses now outsourcing their fleet management, ownership of driver safety is often unclear, leading to neglect of procedures.
Grey fleet compliance
Do employees use their own vehicles for business mileage? Do their vehicles fit with your fleet policy and have the correct insurance and a current MOT?
Insurance costs
High incidence of vehicle collisions can lead to increases in company insurance premiums, or to high cost of damage excesses and waiver charges applied by vehicle leasing companies.
Poor fuel economy
Driving style is a huge influencing factor on fuel bills. Drivers trained in eco-driving techniques have been shown to be able to improve their mpg by 12.5% on average.
As the number of drivers and vehicles in a business grows, these tasks multiply, creating a challenge for anyone with responsibility for the company fleet. All too often, such challenges can lead to the neglect of road safety policy in medium-sized businesses, especially in cases where the ownership of the responsibility for it is not clearly defined.
Easy, low-cost routes to full compliance
Given the complex nature of modern business fleets, many believe that driver training and risk management will be costly, admin-heavy, or both. In reality, with the right tools and support, it’s neither. Any business with a sizeable fleet will benefit from one of our tailored driver risk management programmes, incorporating all the tools you need to create a safer, more efficient fleet.
Help with fleet policy for businesses of all sizes
If you have any questions about fulfilling the requirements of your company fleet policy, or need to create one from scratch, we can help. Our team of account managers is on hand to share their expertise with you in a free consultation. Get in touch today to talk things through.
