A safe fleet starts with an employee who has the right attitude towards safe driving. And that’s why the recruitment process is so important in helping organizations achieve a crash-free culture.
“It takes much less effort to thoroughly screen a driver during the hiring process than it takes to manage a poor driver or, worse, deal with the crashes they create,” said Jim Noble, Director of Insurance and Commercial Fleet Services at eDriving Fleet. But how do employers know who they are hiring? Here, Noble provides his top tips to help organizations feel confident that they are recruiting drivers who are most likely to display safe attitudes and behaviors on the road.
It’s recommended that one person in the organization manages the recruitment process. That’s because competing interests could cause some people to overlook or even ignore certain issues to get a candidate hired. “For example, a Sales Director might interview a candidate with an outstanding record of dramatically improving sales at his last two companies; he’s exactly what that organization has been looking for,” said Noble. “However, the candidate’s driving record is terrible and indicates a high-risk driver. While the Sales Director might hire the person and hope they don’t have a crash, it’s important that someone views the overall picture and takes into account the safety performance of that candidate.”
Whatever role you’re hiring an employee for, their safety on the road matters. “Whether you’re recruiting a person to be a professional driver or hiring a person who just happens to drive for some of the time that they’re working, that person is still exposed to risk on the road,” said Noble. “The rigor you put into recruiting that employee should be the same, regardless of what they will be doing.”
And poor driving record should be grounds for not hiring a candidate. “The employer can find out important past risk indicators from violations to incidents from multiple sources,” said Noble. “Past violations are a statistically accurate indicator of future performance.”
Use all available tools to uncover a driver’s past road safety performance and assess their level of skills, defensive driving knowledge, attitude and behavior patterns. “Looking at motor vehicle records and crash incident history is very important,” said Noble. “But adding an extra layer on top of this will help managers identify whether potential employees have the right attitudes to operate in your crash-free culture.”
Assessing skills and knowledge is straightforward. A thorough road test and a few basic questions will accomplish this task. Attitudes and behavior patterns are harder to determine and require special tools to develop an in-depth risk profile of the prospective employee.
“This should be supported by online risk assessments to measure defensive driving skills, hazard perception skills and safe driving attitudes,” said Noble. He said there is a general reluctance to use these tools because they are seen as too intrusive. “That’s not so,” he explained. “The tools available today are both entertaining and informative to fit the style of the modern user. Not only do you get a complete risk picture of your potential driver, but they get some good defensive driving education as well.”
Make assessment results available to frontline management after the driver is hired to allow the manager to review the driver’s strengths and weaknesses. “Just like operational performance, road safety performance needs support to help the employee succeed,” said Noble. “Information from the pre-employment assessments helps the manager support the driver.”
Communicate the expected standards of conduct to all potential new recruits right from the beginning. “This all forms part of the organization’s safety culture,” said Noble. “The culture should start with management and be reinforced across the whole organization; with no exception, including new hires.”
Build a plan to continually monitor driver safety performance. If the driver slips below established standard levels it’s important that drivers get the necessary training and reinforcement to bring attitude in line with the organization’s culture. “Remember, the decline in performance might not be a driver problem but an indication that the entire organization needs a crash-free culture tune-up,” Noble said.
Driver and risk managers: assess how effective your current organizational safety measures are at reducing driver risk and receive best practice advice about driver license checks, risk assessment and driver training with eDriving’s Fleet Safety Program Assessment.
