More Engaged Drivers Are Safer and More Productive

Risk Management as a Vector Toward Engagement

Are More Engaged Drivers Are Safer and More Productive? One fleet of semi trucks might ship food nationally, one fleet of vans might deliver dry-cleaning locally. Either fleet is safer with engaged drivers, and risk management best practices can facilitate such engagement. There are a variety of ways to go about that.

One of the most popular methods presently involves utilizing fleet management technology to expand insight into operations. Tracking devices networked with modern cloud infrastructure incorporating “Big Data” can reveal real-time data.

A web-enabled touchscreen tablet can show relevant information on each vehicle; including where a given unit is in the current maintenance schedule, how long it has been in operation, how many miles it has driven, what average mileage the unit is able to achieve, and more.

Dash cams and the like protect companies from bad drivers on the road, and help drivers in situations requiring reverse gears be more safe. Overall, fleet technology fosters engagement directly and collaterally. Also, such fleet tech can be enhanced by drivers in some circumstances. We’ll explore more here.

Incentives Foster Engagement

Fleet technology is a fine vector toward driver engagement, because things become more “tangible” for drivers. They don’t have to “abstract” data. If a driver is calculating mileage without tech, they’ll make mistakes, and the annoyance of calculating for variables can make this chore undesirable.

However, when drivers can simply defer to dispatch, or tap an in-cab touchscreen to get info, that reduces complications, helping them plan. Routes can be updated, mileage maximized, and operational investments more fully matured. You can help engage drivers in this way by providing certain incentives for hitting metric goals.

Career Paths Are Important

Another help for engagement is a career path. If drivers are in a fleet, that means they’re managed by those “up the chain”. More engaged drivers seeking promotion are more likely to take risk management into their own hands; they’ve got more “skin in the game”.

It will depend on the fleet, of course; but a driver might make a good dispatcher if they learn their own route well enough. The larger the fleet, the more personnel are necessary in this capacity.

Of course, some fleets are made of owner/operators and only managed in an external sense. Various operational architectures ultimately determine the best moves here.

Keeping Everybody “Honest”

Fleet management generally leads to more harmonious operations and better engagement among drivers. Some drivers always cut corners, some drivers always go the extra mile, and most drivers are in between those extremes.

If you don’t have means of collecting data to determine who is who, the slacker may be incidentally rewarded, and the hard worker incidentally punished.

It’s important to have ironclad data to refer to as a means of revealing what’s really going on. Proper fleet technology incorporating trackers, cameras, and other equipment of the Internet of Things variety provides that information.

Accordingly, drivers understand they’re seen, and what they’ve done (or haven’t done) can be shown to those in fleet management. That engages them whether or not they’d prefer such a circumstance. They must be engaged so the data doesn’t incidentally sell them out.

Upgrading Fleet Management Technology Can Foster Engagement

Modern fleet management technology can help encourage driver engagement by fostering more equal treatment among drivers, facilitating data to enable career paths, and making incentive distribution more accurate to associated engagement.

Engagement is key. The more engaged your drivers, the better. Safety Track‘s Fleet management technology, in addition to safeguarding drivers and equipment, is a fine method for encouraging more engagement among your drivers.