At the 2022 Australasian Fleet Conference and Exhibition we explored the nuances of encouraging and establishing safe driving practices among employees with Colin Sutherland, Chief Customer Officer at Geotab.
Measuring safety within a workplace culture is a key step in identifying the overall success of safe driving practices being adopted among employees.
“For you to make safety real in your business, you have got to take it out of the abstract and make it a very measurable contribution to the company’s bottom line.”
How can success be measured?
- The level of compliance with the Driver Safety Guidelines you have published
- Improved ratio of company revenue in relation to insurance and claims costs
- Specify vehicles to include cost to repair
- Review vehicle selection with employee satisfaction rating
- Exec Board sponsor of Environmental Health & Safety
Colin spoke on the importance of the Driver handbook and its place in improving/addressing workplace safety compliance while ensuring all drivers remain aware on the expectations on Driver Safety Guidelines.
The employee or Driver handbook should-
- Clearly document expectations for driving performance
- Be updated annually to align with business objectives and any new vehicle features and have employees acknowledge the handbook annually
- Not create policies that single out individual employees
- Separate how you manage incidents such as traffic violations (seatbelt or speeding tickets) from coaching ‘risky behaviour”
Cultivating a positive environment with high employee morale can prove challenging especially when faced with vast amounts of data which managers will need to use to guide and coach their teams while keeping drivers motivated and engaged.
To maintain business objectives and safe driving practices, Colin explained the benefits of driver coaching and rewards, including gamification.
Gamification is the process of using game thinking and tools in common settings, which are not related to games. It is used to engage and motivate people to achieve goals. It works because it taps into the basic needs for Status and Achievement.
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