Tips For Improving Compliance in Fleet Management
If you own a business that includes a fleet or you simply manage a fleet, one of your major areas of concern is likely effective management while your drivers are on the road. This includes compliance since failure to measure up in this area can mean significant fines. It can also mean that your drivers are not as safe as they should be. The measures below can all help you improve your compliance.
Work on Your Company Culture
What is the culture at your place of business? If it is a driven environment of getting things done at all costs, this could end up with drivers who take dangerous shortcuts. This is true if the company operates in a punitive atmosphere with serious consequences for delayed or late deliveries. Of course, having reliable, on-time drivers is important but not at the expense of safety. Therefore, you need to create a healthy culture that encourages good communication, safety and searching for solutions if unavoidable delays occur. Incentives, including gamification, can be an excellent way to keep drivers motivated and morale high. Rewards for good results generally work better than penalizing drivers for safety lapses and other errors unless these appear to be a consistent issue.
Solutions for Drivers
There are a number of different types of tools that can help with compliance. For example, electronic logging devices can prevent hours of service violations. An ELD compliance solution is one of a number of ways that monitoring drivers can help improve fleet management. Telematics can return information on route, speed and other factors that can help you better understand what challenges drivers are facing and maximize their efficiency.
Maintenance
There are certain regulations that you must follow when it comes to regular inspection and maintenance, but you should think about whether this schedule is sufficient at your company. You don't want to bog your drivers down in endless rounds of inspections, but there may be times when a better strategy is going above and beyond the minimum. Another consideration in this situation is keeping costs down, including the price of fuel and parts. You may find software designed for fleet management and driven by data to be an effective way to balance all of these variables. Depending on the length of your routes, you may consider following some post road trip tips at the end of every vehicles journey just to keep things status quo.
Training
Training your drivers so that they fully understand the regulations they need to follow can be challenging if you tend to work with a lot of contractors. However, it is important to check that any drivers that you hire, even temporarily, are capable of performing the necessary tasks and staying safe. Depending on how dramatic seasonal fluctuations are for you, you might want to consider weighing the savings of using contractors against concerns about compliance and fleet management strategies. The advantage of drivers who are employees is that you have more control and more scope to encourage teamwork and other positive work practices. While it is not always feasible to stay fully staffed year-round, you should consider how you might need to adjust your strategy for contractors.