The Importance of Protecting Your Employees
All esteemed business owners know that employees are a very important asset. Even the law agrees with this, which is why they have many rules and regulations that favor employees. So fleet managers have to do right by their employees – the law obligates them to do so. Unfortunately, not caring about your employees’ welfare can land fleet managers in seriously hot waters with the law.
However, we’d like to think that fleet managers care about their employees not only because the law tells them to. Fleet vehicles are considered valuable to a company because they cannot run successfully without them. Hence, managers take good care of them. The same applies to employees. Without your drivers, how will your cars get anywhere? The drivers are the ones who accept and fulfill orders and ply routes, so without them, the business will also fail. In the same vein, fleet managers should care greatly about employees simply because the business can’t survive without them.
Protect Your Employees While They Are On The Field
Fleet managers usually receive a lot of push back from drivers when it comes to fleet tracking. The drivers often feel that their employers don’t trust them, hence why they’re being tracked. Although fleet managers do implement fleet tracking to keep employees accountable and honest, there are many ways by which the tracking system can also work in favor of fleet drivers.
Regular Vehicle Maintenance
One of the biggest reasons why drivers experience problems on the road is faulty vehicles. When vehicles break down in the middle of a route, drivers can get stranded or even get into an accident if it happens suddenly. It is the employer’s responsibility to ensure that all fleet vehicles are safe and roadworthy to protect their employees from possible injuries.
Everyone knows the importance of regular maintenance to keep vehicles in top shape. Still, it’s hard to keep track of maintenance schedules, especially for a large fleet. In addition, maintenance frequency is not the same for all vehicles. Some vehicles may require more maintenance than others due to frequent use. It is possible to keep track of it manually, but if you don’t keep an eye on the schedule carefully, you may miss one or two vehicles.
By installing and labeling GPS trackers in your vehicles, you can also set maintenance schedules for each vehicle. Then, all you need is to check on your vehicles every day using the companion app. It keeps you updated on the vehicle’s next scheduled maintenance.
Risky Driving Behavior
As they say, sometimes you need to protect employees from themselves. While they’re out on the road, employees can get into accidents from their own doing. While most of your fleet drivers might be compliant with traffic laws and are very careful when plying their routes, you’re bound to have a few drivers who are likely to cause trouble while driving.
Fleetr’s fleet tracking system has a feature called the Driver Safety Scorecard. This feature has identified the following as signs of possible risky driving behavior:
- Rapid acceleration
- Speeding
- Sharp turns
- Hard braking
The app will not only flag you each time a driver manifests these behaviors, but it will also record each incident of risky driving behavior, including the duration and severity of the offense. Finally, the app tallies all these incidents. Then, it compares them against the total driving time to come up with the Driver Safety Score.
Using the Driver Safety Score, you can determine which employees are driving safely while on the road and not. A driver safety score of 67 and above is considered good. In contrast, a score of 33 or below requires intervention from the fleet manager. This feature allows you to determine which drivers are more likely to get into road accidents due to their unsafe driving habits and can rectify these behaviors before anything untoward happens to them.
Protect Your Employees From Liability
Drivers are often wary of vehicle tracking systems because they feel like anything they do can get them in trouble. However, GPS data can also be used to protect them from liability, corroborate their story, and clear them of accusations.
In a business, it’s normal to get customer complaints. Although they say the customer is always right, it doesn’t mean that your drivers are wrong, either. For example, suppose you get a customer complaint about your employee arriving late to a work order. In that case, chances are you will apologize for your employee’s behavior and reprimand that employee for being tardy. However, with GPS tracking, you can double-check what time the vehicle arrived at the customer’s house. If they arrived on time, it might just be a case of a very fussy customer, and the employee will be spared from punishment because GPS data has corroborated their story.
Accusations of theft are also common in a company where there are a lot of physical assets. If vehicles, machinery, and equipment go missing, employees can get accused of thievery. Thankfully, asset trackers can be used to locate missing assets. In most cases, these assets are misplaced and not stolen. Without fleet tracking, a driver can get in trouble for something they did not do.
This is also true for traffic accidents. If your driver was involved in a car accident, and the other driver testified that your employee was overspeeding, which is why the accident happened. Remember that GPS tracking can detect certain risky driving behaviors, and speeding is one of them. You can help defend your employee’s case with this data, in addition to other evidence that can protect your employee from blame.
Protect Your Employees From Unfair Business Practices
Not all businesses are built the same, and some companies have policies that put drivers at a disadvantage. Having a system that automates a lot of what goes on in the back office can minimize management behaviors that violate the rights of employees.
Regulating Work Hours
If you have a small fleet, you may feel that increasing your vehicle count is outside your current budget. However, there might be days wherein you get more work orders than usual. For most companies, the right thing to do is reject certain orders, especially if there are no available drivers. However, this may seem like wasted profits, which is why some businesses tell their drivers to work more than their designated work hours so that they can fulfill all orders.
The government has set hours of service requirements for drivers of commercial vehicles. Drivers have a 14-hour driving window, but only after being off-duty for 10 hours. Once you reach the 14-hour limit, you cannot drive again and must go off-duty for another 10 hours. This regulation was created for the safety of drivers everywhere.
Driver fatigue is another leading cause of road accidents. When a driver is tired from driving continuously for several hours, their muscles relax so they can’t respond to threats quickly. Their eyesight also tends to get blurry, especially if they start to feel sleepy while driving. Mandated hours of service ensures that drivers start their routes with a clear and focused mind.
Using a GPS tracking system to track all driving logs makes it easy to tell which employees are at their HoS limits and cannot accept more orders for the time being. In addition, because everything is automatic, it’s difficult to tamper with the system to change driving logs.
Protect Your Employees With GPS Tracking
GPS tracking can protect your employees in several ways, which should ease any driver’s concerns about lack of trust and invasion of privacy. In addition, there are many ways by which you can make GPS tracking work in favor of your employees instead of against them.
Fleetr’s fleet management system uses GPS technology to deliver valuable data straight to you in real-time. With this data, you can develop company policies that ensure a secure and fair workplace for your employees. In addition, you can give you insights on areas that need improvement. For example, a workplace that goes to great effort to protect its employees will always produce loyal, happy, and productive employees. This ensures that your drivers not only stay with the company but will treat its success as if it were their own. To learn more, contact Fleetr!
