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.
An effective, competent, self-monitoring mobile workforce can be the key reason for a company's continued success. But when risk remains unchecked, a fleet and its drivers can also be the biggest source of unrecoverable costs.
If you're new to fleet management, you'd be forgiven for wanting to know a little more about fleet risk management and what it involves. What do you need to do and what’s the best way to approach it? How do you keep on top of risks to cost blow-outs and prevent them from happening?
