Driver safety, globally

Tailoring a global vision, standards, objectives and content to local need. 

Background

With a 150+ year history, Pfizer Inc. is one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, represented in over 70 countries by approximately 100,000 colleagues – approximately one third of whom comprise the sales organization who need to travel to engage with key groups such as distributors and medical professionals.

Globally Pfizer operates over 33,200 company cars and 3,500 motorcycles, for which a standardized world-wide fleet safety program has been developed. Additionally, Pfizer has hundreds of site vehicles including trucks, vans and motorized equipment. Driving has been identified as one of the most hazardous activities colleagues undertake. Accordingly, continuous assessment and improvement of Pfizer’s global fleet safety effort is a high priority for the safety of colleagues and others in the communities in which we operate.

Transforming road-related risk

Pfizer’s global fleet safety program was launched internationally in 2010, based on a three phased implementation period and has reached an initial launch of 80% of our fleet in 23 countries.

The key elements of the program are:

  • Vehicle selection / maintenance.
  • Risk ranking.
  • Communication of results and targeted training / driver coaching.
  • On-going encouragement and support.
  • Assessing, communicating and coaching the expected behaviors for Pfizer drivers.

The program is supported by a customized data management system to track and trend driving performance which has the ability to identify needs for additional supervision or coaching. The program proceeds with the following online and face to face modules accessed globally via Virtual Risk Manager (VRM).

Phase 1:
Review and execution of Privacy Consent, Local Policy Acknowledgement, and Pfizer Safe Driving Pledge; along with completion of the Pfizer Safe Driver Risk Foundation module which seeks to ensure knowledge and understanding of the local policy and driver minimum performance criteria, along with a ‘Rules of the Road Best Practice Guide’.

Phase 2:
Completion of online RoadRISK tool to assess driver exposures and behaviours.

Phase 3:
Completion of awareness coaching and for identified at high risk drivers – based on VRM DriverINDEX and OneToOne Manager / Driver coaching sessions.

Phase 4:
Completion of country specific ‘gap analysis’ to re-evaluate the effectiveness of and set goals to continuously improve the program.

Following program launch and annually thereafter, all participants are required to refresh the Safe Driving Pledge and Safe Driver Risk Foundation questionnaire via VRM; repeat the risk ranking process with a year on year comparison; continue awareness coaching selected from a range of appropriate online and face to face modules. The data is reviewed to identify at medium and at high risk drivers, who are then provided with additional coaching as required based on local market decisions.

Supporting the program, the Global Fleet Safety Implementation Team is comprised of a Project Leader / Champion, Fleet Senior Director, Regional Fleet Directors, Director / Team Leader EHS, Global Privacy Office and Human Resource, Global Risk Insurance.

The Pfizer fleet safety program is innovative in its partnership-based approach and the detailed multi-lingual tools, management information system and data warehouse developed to support global, regional and business unit managers in their decision making. This approach has assisted in the successful replication of a globally consistent process, with modifications as required to address specific local needs.

Based on experiences to date, the five critical success factors or organizational DNA for implementing a successful global driver safety program include:

  1. Committed leadership implementing effect management structure with special attention to country business leader buy-in as a result of senior above country leader buy-in. With bottom up commitment that is equally important.
  2. Being able to tailor a global vision, standards, objectives and content to local need.
  3. Strong partnerships.
  4. Understanding and overcoming international privacy and other regulations.
  5. Ensuring the availability of standardized, accurate data and metrics for evaluation purposes.

This is supported by the global road safety partnership between Pfizer and eDriving which involves a system rollout of VRM, focusing on building a culture of minimal at-risk behaviours by managers and drivers. Each Pfizer market establishes a local governing committee, policies, processes and procedures as well as driver risk assessment, and program improvement. This includes a detailed application of the VRM DriverINDEX Predictive Modeling and associated risk data warehouse to identify the most at-risk drivers, managers and work allocators requiring further support.

Data protection and privacy issues are of paramount importance in any fleet risk management initiative, but particularly when the program is of a global nature – spanning European, Asian, Latin American and North American privacy laws. Data privacy practices are driven by local experts who hone the process to ensure appropriate protections.

Results

To date, the program has been successfully launched in the 23 countries with our largest fleets, and the organization continues to work hard to roll-out further in-country launches. During 2012-2013, the program is planned to be implemented in 33 additional countries. To support this, work is on-going to continue to establish an internal community of practice where all in-market teams share good practices and replicate efforts. During implementation focus has been to establish consistent data reporting practices. The next phase of the program is to establish formalized collision reduction targets; although positive results in terms of collision, injury, damage and costs are already being achieved in many markets.