The culture of any organisation starts with what’s happening at the top. Company leaders are the ones who set the tone for all employees to follow, and this is especially true when setting a culture of health and safety for a mobile workforce.

While it calls for a massive effort, ingraining safety culture from the top down is worth the valuable result of lower overall fleet risk. In an environment that promotes personal responsibility for safety, fleet drivers will be more conscious of safe practices on the road, and can even inspire each other to maintain that standard.

This blog post will discuss how safety culture can be implemented, starting with the leaders.

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Safety as a core value among leaders and connections to fleet safety

There are many layers to an organisation. In order for a culture of fleet safety to be established — and indeed, for each organisational layer of the company to be infused with it — it has to start with senior management.

A strong health and safety culture will permeate all operations, influencing the way policies are drawn and how well the fleet drivers follow safety rules. When senior management decide safety will be a core value of the organisation, they can both create written rules and an unwritten ‘culture’ around it.

Then, once new standards are effectively communicated to managers, they can be handed down to supervisors and finally instilled in the driving teams.

The role of management’s performance metrics

A large part of creating and spreading a safety culture is to measure the right things. For example, aside from just the number of deals closed by the mobile sales force, and the number of journeys taken, safety-related metrics should be measured, such as:

• Total vehicle incident rate
• Driver training activities and assessments for each driver
• Real-time monitoring of risky behaviour (such as speeding)
  
  

Prioritising safety metrics, and not putting all the focus on short-sighted, bottom-line metrics that can put dangerous pressure on drivers, will expose key areas for improvement and promote internal discussions around safety.

Also, managers should celebrate good driving, more than they insist on punishing bad driving. This incentivises safe behaviour on the road and nourishes a budding safety culture.

How management can encourage a safer work culture

Managers can make a difference by influencing employees to take specific actions towards safer driving. But first, some company policies that govern driver responsibilities may need reshaping.

You’ll want to make sure you have policies that:

• Account for driver fatigue (for example, when long journeys are required, or when overnight accommodations are warranted)
• Reduce driver distractions (such as prohibiting drivers from answering work-related calls while on the road)
• Allow for alternate routes or rescheduling in the event of bad weather
• Consider employee feedback on routes, timing, and overall procedures

Also, employees should be directed to obey all laws and practice defensive driving. Even under normal circumstances, you might add specific rules that minimise risk, such as always slowing down when sharing the road with a suspected impaired driver, and consciously observing mirrors and blind spots at all times. 

The importance of future predictions on fleet safety

A safety culture grows out of a forward-thinking attitude. Your company must be comfortable looking into the future on the levels of employee behaviour, industry standards, and evolving laws.

First, you’ll need to know which drivers are most at-risk. They are the ones who will need more intensive, remedial training. At the same time, all drivers should be monitored, and continuous predictions should be made about their behaviour.

To have a future-ready safety culture, companies should also be comfortable with industry trends. Your competitors might be prioritising newer, safer vehicles, or looking into reporting and tracking technologies that enhance fleet oversight. It’s important that your company gets ahead of the curve in those areas, in order to lower risk.

Finally, health and safety regulations are always in flux. By monitoring and ensuring compliance with changing H&S rules, and communicating new policies throughout the company, you’ll help embed the importance of safety in all business practices.

Ingraining safety culture is a big task, but it’s made up of many small, doable efforts.

Once senior management take on driver safety as a core value, it naturally leads to the measurement of relevant metrics, as well as a focus on internal and external trends and predictions that matter for safety. Those companies that follow this ethos are most likely to succeed at creating a safe driving culture: one that reliably keeps fleet risk at a minimum. 

To learn more about instilling a safety culture that will last, download and read our eBook, ‘How to Manage Health and Safety Risk with a Mobile Workforce’.