How to Manage an Effective Fleet Safety Program

Any company that has a fleet of mobile workers considers the safety of their truck drivers, and the public, a top priority – and for good reason. Fleet vehicle accidents are costly on multiple levels for any business– injury claims, vehicle repairs, employee morale, loss of productivity, company reputation and DOT audits and interference, just to name a few. That’s why having an effective fleet safety program in place is so important.

Two big contributors to commercial motor vehicle accidents are driving behaviors and maintenance issues. Accidents resulting from either of these often could have been avoided and that’s what makes them so devastating. Today’s article will review specific steps you can take to develop an effective fleet safety program for your business. But first, we’ll touch on the importance of culture and how you can work to improve the safety culture of your fleet.

Safety Starts with Culture

Safety culture consists of shared beliefs, practices and attitudes within an organization. Creating a strong safety culture takes time and starts first with top management buy-in. It’s a process that brings all levels of the organization together to work toward a common goal where everyone feels responsible for safety and it becomes an integral part of daily operations. Developing safety recognition programs or incentive programs can even make safety fun.

Companies with a mature safety culture can not only reach injury rates approaching zero but also find people support and challenge each other to work safely. While zero incidents may seem like an impossible dream it’s important to aim high. Trucking companies report that through the use of technology and a strong safety culture they experienced a 60% reduction in preventable accidents – equating to 75 accidents that did not happen.

The first step to developing an effective fleet safety program is doing a thorough risk assessment. A risk assessment is the process where you identify hazards, analyze or evaluate the risk associated with that hazard and determine appropriate ways to eliminate or control the hazard. The goal of the risk assessment process is to remove a hazard or reduce the level of its risk by adding control measures or precautions, and, in doing so, creating a safer and healthier workplace.

How Do You Conduct a Risk Assessment?

First, you need to know where your organization is now – assess the current level (or lack) of safety. Getting to know the true state of your organization’s safety status will involve asking questions. For example: What is the overall safety behavior of the organization? How can we quantify our safety behavior? Are we compliant? How does our CSA profile compare to our competitors’? As part of your initial review you’ll also want to be thinking about where you want to end up.

This is a process you can undertake yourself, but you will probably get more value from having an independent group do the assessment for you. A fresh, objective set of eyes can see unsafe blind spots that you’ve been missing for years. You need to conduct a risk assessment based on known quantities.

The risk assessment document defines behaviors in 11 different categories including Loss/Run Analysis (previous 3 years), Loss Prevention, Incident Investigation, Claims Management, Emergency Response Procedures, Regulatory Compliance, General Liability, Motor Vehicle/Fleet Safety, On-Boarding/Training, and Safety Policy and Ergonomics (as applicable).

Along with your risk assessment, get the current state of your baseline organizational safety behaviors. With this done, you’re in a good position to start developing a strategy to improve safety and set realistic goals.

Developing a Safety Strategy

Now that you’ve identified the critical issues your organization needs to address, it’s time to set goals and objectives (both short and long term) and develop a strategy and an action plan to obtain your goals. For example, if your goal is to improve your CSA score, one of your strategies could be to reduce the occurrence of avoidable accidents. The tactics you could use to do this are:

Routine driver training
Use of in-cab alerts for speeding or harsh-braking incidents and
The implementation of a friendly competition/gamification or incentive program using driver scorecards and leaderboards.

Your strategy should include a well-defined safety policy. This should be made available as a company-wide document (shorter is best, e.g. two pages) and should discuss safe and unsafe behavior within the organization.

It’s important that your safety policy creates a sense of individual responsibility and accountability at all levels of the organization, from the CEO and safety manager to the drivers. To help create stickiness and a level of fun, incorporate safety recognition or incentive programs to reward desired behavior or improvements. For example, the driver with the least number of speeding incidents in a specified time period is rewarded with a pair of movie tickets.

Something else that will help get buy-in from all employees is making sure they feel like their voice has been heard in forming the safety policy.

Setting Up Effective Training and Technology

Quality safety training provides the tools to protect workers’ health and lives and to prevent work-related injuries. An effective safety training program develops employees who are not only educated but empowered to improve the conditions where they work – be it behind the desk or behind the wheel.

While most organizations provide training, many undermine the value of it by not assessing its effectiveness. So, make a key part of your training a systematic measurement of employee engagement, interactivity and retention (of knowledge) through surveys and post-training evaluations.

Avoid the trap of just going through the motions – employees are quick to detect a lack of genuine commitment to the training process. If you’re not dedicated to making it work, how you can expect them to be?

Furthermore, organizations that are adopting more scalable technologies such as cloud and converged devices are seeing greater growth opportunity. Technology can connect assets, people and the work they do and, as a result, transform the way companies do business. The use of technology can also be a vital and effective element of your safety program – when used properly. There are plenty of vendors out there that have designed technology solutions that are focused on not only making your mobile worker’s workday safer, but more enjoyable, productive and easier.

Look at the following technologies that are not only changing but improving the way drivers go about their day:

Driver behavior apps: Apps exist that bring friendly competition to driver safety by scoring driving behavior and displaying scores on a leaderboard. These apps use real-time monitoring of truck driver behavior, empower the driver to self-moderate their driving with little to no intervention from their supervisor. It leverages the inherent desire to compete, either with one’s self or with others, to increase engagement and participation.
Custom electronic forms: Work order management reduces the paperwork burden for your truck drivers and back office. Create custom job forms to match the exact needs of each work order – collect relevant data and relay it to the back office instantly.
ELD Compliance: You can also use apps to automate HOS logging, vehicle inspections (DVIRs) and IFTA, speed up roadside inspections and keep data accurate and up to date.
Last-mile/on-site navigation: Designed specifically for commercial drivers, many modern-day apps provide unique route views, custom route preferences and last-mile routing. They don’t just cut down on the number of on-site incidents (proportionately high for most carriers) – they are also great for keeping your serviced customers happy as vehicles enter and exit the correct way.
Distraction-free devices: Optional solutions can also lock down a device (phone or tablet) when the vehicle is in motion, ensuring the driver focuses on the road ahead.

These types of technologies are not just improving and reinforcing safety standards in mobile workforces – they’re improving driver retention, and that’s good for the whole industry.

Trucking companies today should not have a hard time finding a cloud-based connected intelligence platform that requires route optimization, real-time work order management, commercial navigation, telematics and mobile integration services for their mobile workforces.

There are many vendors dedicated to enhancing the value of their customers’ businesses through intelligent integration of location technology, information and services. The question now is, why aren’t you taking full advantage of their products and services?

from Quick Transport Solutions Trucking Blog https://ift.tt/35XuaeN

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