Even for the most diligent fleet manager, it’s hard to keep tabs on everything that poses a risk to the company fleet. Get everything ‘right’ and you can still find yourself awakened by late-night road incidents, only to deal with the costs and admin from vehicle downtime, liabilities, and third-party negotiations.
Through the holiday season, is your fleet in great working order, ready to face the new year? If not, now’s the time to take corrective action.
Managing the finances of a business means always being prepared for the unexpected. For companies managing fleets, that involves accounting for the chance of accidents.
Crashes are never 100% preventable, so understanding the financial risks ahead of time is key.
When a mobile workforce is a vital part of operations, survival can be challenging as it means making sure the fleet always runs smoothly.
While a fleet is rarely impacted by accidents and features low overall risk, it safeguards the business it serves. But to achieve this, fleet risk management is essential. It’s the only way to be certain you're bringing risk to a minimum, ensuring driver safety, and staying compliant with Health & Safety laws.
When you're in charge of a mobile workforce, you're responsible for your workers’ health and safety under all circumstances, including bad weather. Winters mean more rainy days and wetter roads, which present many unique hazards to your fleet.
Working for a small business, it might seem possible to handle all the administrative tasks that comes with an in-house fleet. The work seems relatively uncomplicated as there are just a few drivers and vehicles to keep tabs on.
The benefits of a strong fleet risk management programme are obvious: less cost to the company, a lower chance of driver accidents, and fewer legal complications.
However, the advantages may not be obvious to the senior leaders of your company, whose approval and support you’ll need when introducing risk management to the corporate culture. Add to that the pressure of quickly understanding complex health and safety regulations, having company-wide compliance fall on your shoulders, and the task can seem pretty impossible.
When it comes to lowering risk for any mobile workforce, there’s a lot you can have direct supervision over. For instance, you can create policies around driver safety that help lower accident rates and you can closely oversee fleet vehicles to maintain their condition and ensure uptime. But workers who use their own vehicles for work — also known as a ‘grey fleet’ — are also a crucial responsibility for any fleet manager.
Any organisation with a mobile workforce must follow rules and regulations around employee safety. While it's a huge responsibility to oversee a mobile workforce, you can confidently manage risk by thinking about and tightening up compliance in every single part of your fleet.
