Case Study

Helping the World’s Largest Healthcare Company, Johnson & Johnson, Drive Down Incident and Injury Rates

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eDriving client Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is the largest healthcare company in the world, with 130,000+ employees globally. It believes good health is the foundation of thriving communities and forward progress. J&J strives to improve access and affordability, create healthier communities, and put a healthy mind, body and environment within reach of everyone, everywhere.

Globally, J&J has a SAFE FLEET programme that has the single aim of ensuring that, at the end of each workday, J&J drivers in all sectors return home safely.

In the UK, the company has approximately 2,200 drivers, almost exclusively car drivers. Traditionally, the company has had a 50/50 split between company car drivers and grey fleet drivers, although the balance is gradually shifting towards grey fleet, with approximately 1,200 drivers currently opting to take a cash alternative to lease their own vehicle.

While J&J’s collision and incident record has remained relatively low in the UK, incident analysis shows that a small proportion of higher-risk drivers are responsible for the majority of incidents. This aligns with eDriving’s research that, on average, 20% of an organisation’s drivers typically account for 80% of risk, insurance and liability costs.

Driving is by far the biggest single risk that most of our staff face. This is why driver safety is a massive focus for us. It’s a board-level mission to drive down our incident rate and injury rate.
Robin Cohen

New Business Development Lead and Chair of SAFE FLEET, The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson

In 2018, J&J UK launched eDriving’s patented fleet offering, Virtual Risk Manager® (VRM), as part of its SAFE FLEET mission. VRM is composed of five interrelated components designed to work together to measurably reduce collisions and incidents caused by risky driving.

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How VRM works:

  • Safety Culture

The heart of VRM is establishing clear cultural context and accepted norms within the organisation. eDriving helps establish or augment each client’s culture of safety including building or improving a company’s fleet safety policy, creating and securing commitment to the driver pledge, and communicating expected driving best practices and privacy policies related to driving.

  • RoadRISK®

VRM’s predictive risk assessment tool helps fleet managers understand the likelihood of a driver being involved in an incident/collision. Input to the model includes driver history, trip and vehicle information, assessments of attitudes, behaviour and knowledge of defensive driving best practices, and real-time hazard identification challenges using full motion video. RoadRISK produces a risk classification (“Low”, “Medium”, “High”, or “Very High”) for each driver. The predictive accuracy of RoadRISK has been independently validated by four large-scale research studies and has been borne out by over 1,000,000 drivers.

  • DriverINDEX®

VRM’s analytics platform integrates comprehensive fleet driver performance data from disparate sources (including 3rd parties) into a single system, providing an unprecedented and unified view of total risk across an organisation. These data sources can include: RoadRISK, licence check, collision/incident, telematics, and additional or custom data ‘universes’. DriverINDEX ranks drivers to identify an organisation’s most at-risk drivers. Fleet managers can focus on the execution of an at-risk response plan that eDriving helps develop and deliver while VRM continues to provide a less intensive annual training plan for those in the lower risk categories. A manager’s toolkit is provided to support fleet managers in coaching and providing intervention for at-risk drivers.

  • RiskCOACH®

An extensive library of 30 subject-specific online training courses is available in 45 languages with country-, region-, and culture-specific content. A core set of six courses is recommended for all drivers during years 1 and 2 of programme implementation, while additional courses are automatically prescribed to at-risk drivers to address gaps identified by RoadRISK assessment results. 36 Best Practice guides are also included for quick review of key topics.

  • Benchmarking

Monthly, quarterly and annual reporting allows fleet managers to monitor key metrics regarding collisions, injuries and incidents (standalone and per million miles driven). Scorecards provide benchmarking at industry, organisation and country/division levels to help calibrate results and identify areas requiring attention.

Leadership commitment to safety

Safety is the top priority for J&J, and driver safety is managed proactively. At the beginning of every year, a board representative shares a video message highlighting the continued importance of the global SAFE FLEET programme, and of J&J employees getting home safely every day. This underlines and reinforces the mission from the very top of the organisation, and the message is cascaded through the business, reinforced by leaders at a local level.

“It’s really important for people to hear the commitment from the very top, but our local leadership board is just as important, particularly in a large company where people can be quite removed from the very senior board,” explains Robin Cohen, New Business Development Lead and Chair of SAFE FLEET, The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson. “Leadership from the very top of the organisation is critically important to implement a safety culture when it comes to safer driving.  This leadership commitment extends from the most senior people in our organisation to the teams who are driving the higher mileages in the course of their work.”

Striving for a safer workforce despite operational challenges

At J&J, everyone is aware of the target of a zero-injury workplace. In fact, this target is written into all employees’ objectives annually. The company is well aware, however, that all employees – and higher mileage drivers in particular – have busy, challenging roles, with multiple priorities. Therefore, allocating appropriate time and focus to safer driving is something that cannot be taken for granted.

The involvement of line managers as driver safety ambassadors and role models has proven invaluable in engaging drivers in the safety mission. Managers are required to take ownership of, and responsibility for, the driving performance of their direct reports, resulting in a stronger commitment to safety. Not only do managers feel empowered, but at the same time they improve their own knowledge and skills, ultimately championing the road safety message to their direct reports.

An example of this approach in action was demonstrated when J&J introduced eDriving’s One More Second® interactive defensive driving course to company car and grey fleet drivers at the end of 2019. Line managers were encouraged to undertake the training first, and subsequently praised the interactive, “life-like” features of the course as they encouraged their direct reports to complete the training.

One More Second is subsequently proving an ideal replacement for behind-the-wheel refresher training during the COVID-19 pandemic, and as a defensive driving “recap” while drivers are off the road.

“Sometimes training can be really dry but eDriving’s training is incredibly interactive and quite life-like. People have actually enjoyed taking it, and for many, it has reignited their enthusiasm and engagement for driver training.”

Achieving an ambitious CPMM target

Understanding the performance and effectiveness of VRM is critical to its continued success. Quarterly dashboard reporting provides insights including number of vehicles, mileage driven, number of crashes, Collisions Per Million Miles (CPMM), minor incidents and most common cause of incidents per sector, which are most frequently parking incidents, low speed manoeuvres and rear-end collisions.

Using a red-yellow-green “traffic light” system, J&J is quickly able to see at-a-glance whether it is achieving its key overall target of a maximum six CPMM.

“Initially, we strived to achieve a crash rate of below 6 per million miles driven,” says Robin Cohen “This was an ambitious target in its own right and, prior to introducing the programme, we were consistently experiencing a crash rate higher than the target. In 2020, the overall rate fell below the target, an outstanding achievement. Whilst it’s pleasing to see this overall reduction in our statistics, we strive to further reduce this number in 2021.”

Keeping safety top of mind

eDriving provides regular communication to J&J to share with drivers, in the form of safe driving alerts, bulletins and monthly newsletters through its digital global road safety magazine, three60, and other formats like driver and manager guides.

“Prior to launching the programme, I used to sit down every quarter with my SAFE FLEET group and decide who was going to put together a forthcoming flyer; for example, about winter driving,” recalls Cohen. “It was quite hard work because we also had our day jobs to focus on and we are not safe driving specialists. It has been really useful to receive these bulletins from eDriving, and have something relevant, informative, and interesting to send to drivers without having to worry about it. Regular communication really makes a difference for our teams and keeps driver safety high on their agenda.”

Incorporating smartphone technology to enhance the programme

In 2021, J&J plans to relaunch licence checking to all drivers (including grey fleet) and approved family members, and is keen to begin the rollout of Mentor, eDriving’s smartphone-based driver risk management app. Mentor not only identifies risky driving behaviour using telematic sensors in the smartphone, but also remediates it with in-app micro-training. Because the programme is smartphone-based, it also enables organisations to combine multiple elements of fleet driver management into one single app.

“For me, Mentor makes sense,” says Cohen. “It will help improve driver safety by providing real-time feedback to the driver, as well as help us track mileage recording, and will make the rollout of targeted training easier.”