The restrictions that are placed on smaller business in terms of resources can create a difficult environment for safer work driving initiatives to be implemented. This however should not reduce the significance that safe work driving practices can have on small organisations.
The Occupational Health and Safety Act binds all organisations, and stipulates that all working environments must be safe.
Work driving incidents can indeed have a more severe impact upon smaller business due to the injury to the worker involved and the following time off from work to recover. This places undue pressure on other workers to take up the extra workload. The loss of a vehicle due to repairs from an incident can also lead to lost productivity, and is usually made worse due to the small size of the fleet, and the inability to easily replace vehicles.
Safer people
- Establishing a culture of safe driving in your business by discussing and consulting driver safety in training, staff meetings and job interviews.
- Recognise positive and negative staff driving performance by having staff incentives and disincentives, and through encouragement and involvement.
- Distribute driver safety information and make readily available.
Safer vehicles
- Ensure sure your vehicles are properly maintained.
- If your staff use their own vehicles, make sure you have a system to check that their cars are adequately maintained and insured.
- Have a system to report vehicle faults and crashes and promptly fix any problems that are discovered, particularly if they may impact on safety.
The extra money invested in purchasing a safer vehicle can save your organisation costs later in terms of reduced physical injury to one of the workers involved in an incident. This will also equate to reduced stress leave, psychological damage, and reduced productivity loss.
A vehicle fleet which represents best practice in fleet selection and maintenance, will have fewer breakdowns; less crash involvement caused by vehicle defects and will be safer in the event of a crash.
At the bare minimum the following should be considered when purchasing safer vehicles:
Involving employees in the decision making process of selecting safer vehicles and colours will encourage them to adopt safer work driving practices.
Gaining support to implement your safe driving policy
Starting the process of implementing a safe driving policy is to gain the support of the owner/manager and also promote the issue to an already established committee, if one exists – most likely OH&S. By doing so resources will not be unduly stretched.
Once support for the program is established it is necessary to involve all employees in the development of the policy so that staff members do not become alienated. Greater acceptance and ‘ownership’ of the document will lead to a more successful adoption.
Raising the issue in staff meetings - rather than just pinning it up on a notice-board - will give the policy a ‘champion’ and put a face to the issue that people can contact.
Utilising other safe driving policies from other organisations, and tailoring it to your own specific needs is one way to make it more effective and easier. The RTA’s own safe driving policy is available as are a host of others in our resources section.
Case Study
A small charity organisation in Newcastle improved safety and reduced costs for their fleet of seven vehicles by establishing a simple data base to track collisions and monitor driver performance.
"Just like any small business, we operate on a tight budget. We can’t afford to have staff off work with an injury and we really notice any increases in our insurance premiums."
"By establishing a database, it allowed us to pinpoint problem areas and respond. In our case, this turned out to be an issue with reverse parking – drivers didn’t have the skills to reverse the large vans. So we arranged for driver coaching, and so far we haven’t had any more problems", says the CEO Alison.
Launching the policy
In launching the policy and making employees aware of the issue, utilise some free RTA resources such as posters and brochures, to help get the message across. These are readily available and can be viewed online. Safer work driving needs to not just be another set of rules but an ingrained way of life that benefits drivers and the organisation alike.
Displaying these messages around your office will help remind your employees of the importance of safe work driving, and will ensure that a safe driving culture begins to take hold in your organisation.
Back to top