Today’s driver managers face plenty of challenges, from recruiting safe drivers to implementing and enforcing safety policies to help keep employees – and the general public – safe on the roads.
Provided that organizations have a strong safety culture as their foundation and formal practices for reducing risk, managing fleet safety can be largely problem-free. Yet, both internal and external pressures – such as time and financial pressures – can deliver fresh hurdles for those responsible for the safety of employees.
But what are the five most common mistakes that driver managers make? And how can those in charge of managing driver risk make sure they don’t make those mistakes? Here Jim Noble, eDriving’s Director of Insurance and Commercial Fleet Services, shares five potentially dangerous – and costly – oversights together with his tips for avoiding these scenarios and ensuring a safer fleet.
1. Negligent hiring: hiring a driver that doesn’t meet your hiring standards just to fill an opening
“The pressure to fill open positions is often enormous because an open position means reduced income and efficiency,” said Noble. “But in today’s expanding global economies good employees are becoming harder to find. This creates pressure to reduce or ignore hiring standards. However, the minute you deviate from your established standards you are open to claims of negligence.”
Reducing or ignoring standards impacts on the safety culture of your organization. “According to the American Management Association employees that have been required to meet the higher standard might resent anyone they know or perceive has less skill or is getting special treatment just so the company can fill an empty seat,” he added.
Negligent hiring can (and does) lead to manslaughter charges which in many countries carry a minimum sentence of 12 month in prison, probation and fines. Prosecution (civil or government) carries heavy consequences including verdicts that reach as high as $18 million.
2. Negligent retention: retaining an employee known to be high-risk without taking corrective action
In today’s data rich environment there is no excuse for not knowing the detailed risk profile of your organization, fleet and individual driver. “There is no longer a defense for not knowing,” said Noble. “How do you know? By using tools and programs that aggregate multiple data sources to create a total risk portrait of your fleet and drivers.”
Programs like eDriving’s DriverINDEX® assemble driver performance data from sources including, government, private and in-vehicle intelligence (telematics) like the Mentor smartphone app. The data can be turned into easily digestible information. In most cases this points to a developing risk problem before it turns into a serious collision.
“Once an at-risk condition is identified you must take immediate corrective action and monitor the effectiveness of the action. Not acting is the very definition of negligent retention,” Noble added. “The negative effects on your business can often be worse than negligent hiring because this data is very accessible and the tools exist to turn the data into actionable information.”
3. Negligence: knowingly putting a driver in an unsafe situation or asking them to operate outside of reasonable or government limits
The Wex Legal Dictionary defines negligence as: A failure to behave with the level of care that someone of ordinary prudence would have exercised under the same circumstances. The behavior usually consists of actions but can also consist of omissions when there is some duty to act (e.g., a duty to help victims of one’s previous conduct).
“In other words, you are creating an unsafe workplace,” said Noble. “The phrase ‘do whatever it takes to get the job done’ comes to mind. Sometimes, managers cross this line unknowingly by asking a driver to operate ‘outside their comfort zone’. But, remember your driver is sharing the road with hundreds of other road users. Certainly not a place to experiment.” This is a good reason for smaller fleets without in-house expertise to hire an experienced road safety consultant or risk management company. “There is no plausible defense for negligence committed knowingly or unknowingly – and the penalties are swift and severe,” Noble added.
4. Vague or unclear expectations: not creating clear safe operating standards for both drivers and management
“Failure to ground the organization in a crash-free culture with top-down messaging, performance goals and strong policies give the impression that road safety is not a priority and leads to the kind of negligence outlined above,” said Noble. “Policies and the procedures that operationalize them are the cornerstone of any crash-free culture program.”
There are two important points to remember when creating and implementing policies. First, they should be detailed and grounded in reality. “Only if they’re realistic can they be enforced,” said Noble. “If you say ‘no cell phones’ do you really mean ‘zero tolerance for texting and driving’ or if you call your driver while they’re on the road, do you expect them to pick up? Let me give you a classic case … I worked with a company that scheduled their Monday morning sales calls while most of the staff was driving to the first appointment to improve efficiency! This is the very definition of negligence.”
The second point to remember when creating and implementing policies is consistent enforcement. “Enforcing policies consistently is your way of drawing that line in the sand and making sure that every person in the organization knows you mean business,” Noble said.
5. Complacency: over-reliance on training to solve problems
Since many fleet managers lack formal safety/risk instruction, training is sometimes considered to be an adequate fleet safety program. “Case law in most parts of the world would strongly disagree with this conclusion,” said Noble. “Yes, training is vital, but it is not a stand-alone solution. It is just one component of a closed loop risk management system that helps managers to establish and sustain a crash-free organization.”
Learn more: Watch eDriving’s on demand webinar in which Jim Noble explains how ticking a box with once-a-year driver training might have the opposite effect on the risk reduction you’re after.
