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Why is fleet risk management important?

Posted by Gordon Brown on Nov 20, 2017 1:33:49 PM

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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?

In this blog we look at fleet risk management and how if done effectively, it can keep your fleet’s exposure to risk to an absolute minimum, and in doing so limits financial risk and legal exposure.

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Protecting People, Property & Profit

First of all, fleet risk management is key to protecting your people, your property and if you’re involved in managing your company’s finances, your profit.

Recent changes to the Health and Safety Act stresses the importance of having an excellent fleet risk management strategy in place. This Act explains how it’s the responsibility of a Person Conducting Business or Undertaking (PCBU) to provide a safe workplace environment, where steps are taken to minimise potential risk. This workplace includes company vehicles used by your employees – your fleet.

'PCBU' has replaced the term ‘employer’. PCBUs can range from a large organisation through to self-employed people with their own company.

Reducing Costs

A solid fleet risk management strategy is a crucial part of managing your company’s financial risk and responsibilities. Not having a smart and reliable strategy in place can be very costly for your company, and your workers.

Here are some examples of where companies in New Zealand got it wrong.

  • In 2014, a company was fined $139,040 for a faulty handbrake resulting in fatality.
  • In 2014, a company was fined $99,000 for failure to maintain a vehicle’s brake resulting in fatality.
  • In 2015, a company was fined $128,000 for failing to ensure worker adequately trained to drive causing fatality. 


As you can see, these tragic incidents were costly in many ways and measures need to be put in place to make the workplace risk free – as far as is reasonably practicable. After all, it’s better to spend time taking care of other important areas of running your fleet than handling the costs, the inconvenience and having a vehicle off the road.

Where to focus

With fleet risk management, there are two main aspects to focus on:

  • Vehicles- they need to be fit for purpose and as safe as possible.
  • Drivers- they need to be road-safety educated and responsible.

A great fleet risk management strategy covers these aspects in detail, including developing fleet safety policies and systems to help build a culture of safe driving, managing incidents that do occur, managing the costs associated with the tracking of incidents, and implementing trend reporting to identify areas of risk.

SurePlan can help

At SurePlan, we can help you develop a fleet safety program that identifies and addresses the specific hazards in your fleet and minimises risk. We offer unique and effective fleet management solutions and driver training making sure that risk to people, property and profit is minimal and your company is protected.

Want to learn more about fleet risk management? Stay updated by subscribing to our blog.

 

Topics: Fleet Risk Management

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