- Planning, funding and pricing your training can be very simple.
- The majority of it can be done in-house.
- How much you need to complete depends on the size of your business.
- Good training can be very cost effective.
- Large companies "invest in training" you should do the same.
- We can help you plan your training, saving you money, times and effort.
Follow this simple checklist to help you prioritise your actions in order to comply with current legislation
Download your free copy of driving at Work" from the Health and Safety Executive website, and then order sufficient numbers for ALL your drivers. This will give you a simple insight into your legal requirements to ensure compliance. Your organisational standards may want or need to be higher than this minimum.
Obtain your information of the Corporate Manslaughter Act. Contravention of this act could lead your organisation into paying unlimited fines for failing to act in a sensible way to prevent accidents causing death or injuries to employees or others. Get this free information pack now from from Safety Media.
Introduce or review company policies which have a specific emphasis allied to driving ie; Mobile phone use for drivers of company vehicles. Do you know what constitutes a "hands free phone" and do you provide them? Are your office staff trained to ask if a person is driving, before commencing a long or complicated telephone call? Do you allow your managers to call employees and engage them on the phone for long conversations? What is the maximum driving time or working day, including driving time for an employee?
Make a formal training plan. This will help you to decide the most cost effective way to train and risk assess your staff, and help you determine which driving policies you may need to review or implement. This will also prove that you have begun risk assessments and started your work in reducing the risk, so minimising the chances of being involved in legal action.
Carry out a training needs analysis, this will help you know what standards are required for your drivers, what standards your drivers are currently at, and finally, what you must do to bridge this training gap, it will also help you prioritise training in the most cost effective way, dealing with the highest priority of risks and offenders first.
Identify a suitably competent person to act as your trainer or assessor, visit the HSE website to understand what makes a "competent person".
Contact your insurance company or broker to determine if a premium discount would apply, if all your staff were to be risk assessed and trained by a competent person. This could substantially reduce the overall cost of training, not only in the first year, but year on year, proving that training pays in the long term.
Make a cost benefit analysis to determine the cost savings that will apply if suitable training is implemented, again proving that training pays in the long term. If you think compliance proves expensive, weigh the costs against those of higher insurance rates, employee absenteeism, vehicle repair and even replacement.
Plan to check all your drivers eyesight on a regular basis, by simply asking them to read a number plate at twenty metres, any difficulties should be investigated by an optician with a written report confirming if they need to wear glasses for driving.
Plan to make regular checks on all your employee's driving licences, ensuring that address's are correct, they are insured to drive the categories of vehicles you require them to drive, is the photo on the licence less than ten years old. Are there any penalty points shown, and does your insurance company have limits on how many points can be collected.
Not licensed means not insured, and you would be liable!
Use the following guide to help you determine if drivers are correctly and legally licenced
D100 Driving Licence Information Booklet
Plan to look at your accident records and determine if one or more employee's are adding to this higher than normal ratio, target your high risk drivers for the quickest reduction in your fleet costs.
Make regular checks on your vehicle faults to determine if there are specific areas of concern, for example are clutches being worn out quicker than normal due to bad driving habits. Do certain vehicles have a higher than normal cost of maintenance per mile. Are you using the right vehicle for the job intended.
Plan to introduce or review your vehicle checklist and fault reporting procedures. You as a manager can also become involved in court procedures if you knowingly allow a faulty vehicle onto the road. Make an inspection of your current vehicles, are they clean and well maintained, is the cab or passenger compartment tidy, is it loaded correctly and suitable for the task. What you need to ask is does this present the image you want to display to the public and your customers.
Download a simple vehicle checklist
Plan to make savings... Fuel is usually the biggest expenditure involved in transport costs after wages. All fleet operators need to reduce costs, and one of the most significant is that of fuel, find out how to save on each and every precious mile, year after year, journey after journey. It will also help to reduce your carbon footprint.
Look at yout fuel costs, identify the lower mpg drivers and ascertain why? Appoint a fuel champion to monitor consumption and make reccomendations. Visit the Feight Best Practice Website.
Analyse your journey's to ascertain if you can eliminate wastage, group several areas together, and combine them into one trip but ensure maximum driving time is limited to two hours or less, followed by a short break, and that driving time is included in the working day allowance.
Act on CO2, reduce your carbon emissions, look at your green credentials and see if you can save money and make the planet a better place for us all. Visit Act on CO2 website.
Download our free version of a blank driver assessment report form in Adobe pdf format Assessment Report.
Contact your local fleet driver training provider, they will be able to help you answer your questions, working through them to confrm the plans and possible cost savings.
Download a copy of this page in Adobe pdf format to use as a checklist Managers Checklist
