Tips on best practice fleet management

As a business owner, managing your motor fleet can be a daunting prospect. Your vehicles are classed as workplaces under the Health and Safety at Work Act, and they must be maintained to high safety standards in order to protect your employees in addition to the burden of ensuring the maximum safety for other road users. There is a huge amount of responsibility; vehicle management, health and safety, financial and legal issues - all of this whilst trying to run a prosperous business!

Without the implementation of good fleet management some drivers fail to look after your vehicles properly. This in turn increases maintenance costs and depreciation. There is also a greatly increased chance of accidents as an employee’s will to care for your assets slips away. As a fleet manager you need to find the right balance between incentives and disciplinary action in order to maintain successful fleet management.

A few tips towards successful fleet management

To help you we have produced a few tips on managing your motor fleet to get you started:

Produce and implement a well-publicised statement of policy

Company policy should be motivational and include details of your commitment to the continued development of your drivers and to support their training, skills, and safety awareness. Your fleet management policy can outline your specific aims to reduce the frequency and cost of fleet insurance claims by specific percentages and how you will regularly assess the standards of the team.

Your fleet management policy should be well communicated and embedded within the business to ensure it is kept at the forefront of driver’s minds, so they can understand the benefits of driver performance and safetry as well as achieving low cost fleet insurance. It is recommended that spot checks are implemented and publicised to keep drivers alert to your fleet management policies throughout the year.

Conduct a thorough risk assessment

Fleet management is a risky business and an initial risk assessment looking into all of the risks of running a motor fleet is required from the outset. This assessment should outline the procedures and training to be implemented to minimise these risks.

Enforce Health and Safety Measures

As an employer you are required to ensure that all employees are provided with a safe working environment to avoid any potential liabilities and ultimately maximise the performance of your business. Whilst the driver is ultimately responsible for their conduct and how the vehicle is driven, the vehicles need to be properly maintained and kept in a safe and roadworthy condition as well as providing training and support on relevant aspects such as heavy loading, or providing a clear loading area, etc.

For best practice in fleet management, monthly vehicle checks should be carried out by a company representative to ensure continued maintenance of all vehicles and well publicised procedures should be in place for how regularly drivers should check their own tyre pressure, oil and brake performance for example.

Driver checks

Regular driver checks, such as 6 monthly original licence checks and medical examinations to identifying any mental or physical inadequacies, such as eye tests, can be implemented to protect against the risk of accident occurrence. Reminders of company policy, particularly in terms of use of drugs, alcohol and mobile phones whilst driving should also be made abundantly clear.

Damage control

Providing your drivers with an information pack to assist them in the event of an accident, can help any motor fleet insurance claims process. Such a pack should contain a form to be completed at the scene of the accident. Many fleet management policies also look to provide a disposable camera or request the use of mobile phones which can be used to record images of the scene, damage caused, the direction of which vehicles are pointing and skid marks, etc.

Speed limiters can be fitted to assist with loss of control as well as employing a ‘How’s my driving?’ scheme to encourage feedback from the public. This way driver behaviour can be monitored, you can even utilise telematics equipment which can be installed in your vehicles to accurately track performance and even guide your drivers towards more efficient driving.

As part of your fleet management it is important to protect against theft. Unfortunately alarms alone do not protect against an experienced thief, so immobilisers are recommended in addition to this as well as keeping as many as possible of your fleet vehicles in a garage or compound overnight or when not in use.

Post-accident procedures

Following an accident the best practice fleet management procedure should be; report, record, investigate and evaluate. You should interview the driver as soon as possible to find out the cause of the accident and what could be done in future to minimise risk. The driver should take some of the liability for their actions if at fault, whether this be a proportion of the costs or points against them for future review to encourage awareness of the impact and encourage good performance.

In addition to this as part of your fleet management policy you can consider driver incentives such as league tables and ‘Best Driver Awards’ to discourage complacency and boost motivation to perform well. Perhaps also integrating rewards for the best fuel consumption, safest driver, or best kept vehicle are all good methods to influence driver behaviour. Costs for such programmes are more than offset by the savings in possible fuel costs, maintenance bills and insurance premiums.

It is widely recommended to introduce post-accident training at different levels depending on the nature of the accident and encourage defensive driving techniques such as reducing vehicle speed, maintaining a safe distance from other vehicles, concentration techniques and hazard perception. Each of these preventative measures will help to support your insurance policies and maintaining lower premiums.