FIELD SERVICE SAFETY ON THE ROADHow a culture of safe driving can positively impact your drivers, your customers, and your bottom line

This report is based on recommendations made by the industry experts who participated in GreenRoad’s May 2016 webinar.

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SETTING THE SCENE FOR SAFETY AWARENESS

CONTENTS

EXPERTS

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, one of every five fleet vehicles is involved in a crash annually.1 The direct damage from such a crash ranges between $16k if there are no injuries up to $500k in case of fatality. As an additional cost, the average mobile worker involved in a road accident will be absent from work for 12 days. The direct cost resulting from these collisions is $1,877 per employee every year. In an organization with 1,000 field workers, the average cost of collisions is nearly $2 million annually. In order to take a deeper look at the costs of unsafe driving, and some of the techniques and tools that organizations can be used to beat them, GreenRoad, a fleet management solution provider, asked two of its experts to illustrate poor habits, and the concrete steps organizations can take to fix them.

2Setting the scene for safety

2Panelists

3The ripple effect of aggressive driving

4Creating visibility around driver safety as a service manager

• Identifying common driver errors

• Best practices for benchmarking your drivers

7Key Recommendations

8About GreenRoad

8About WBR Digital

Dougie Portwood Director of Strategic Programs GreenRoad

David Rodriguez Chief Marketing Officer GreenRoad

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THE RIPPLE EFFECT OF AGGRESSIVE DRIVING

The statistics linked to a crash are just one element of the damage to your brand. At GreenRoad, after years of study we have identified what we call a ripple effect of aggressive driving. Ultimately, aggressive or poor driving always leads to the same outcomes. It starts with high fuel consumption, causing environmental damage. One of the first things you’ll notice from aggressive driving is, for a large field service organization, a significant increase in cost around fuel consumption and vehicle wear and tear, even during times when fuel costs are below average. Safer driving can save millions in fuel costs and vehicle wear and tear.

Apart from fuel costs, the risk of collisions rises exponentially the more aggressively one drives, to the point where they become inevitable. These accidents can range from minor bumps, to bruises to the car, to major collisions that can remove the vehicle from service. When accidents occur where the vehicle is removed from service, the risk of injury or fatality rises dramatically.

When aggressive driving becomes habitual for the technician, they increase their risk of injury or fatality, and oftentimes that doesn’t only involve the driver, but others on the road as well. This creates associated costs with medical liability, not to mention the impact of your long-term insurance ratings for having those types of drivers on board. Finally, at the end of the ripple effect, every one of these issues affects your service levels and creates possible disruptions due to employee absenteeism, and in the worst cases, fatality. Improving driver safety ultimately protects your bottom line and your brand.

David Rodriguez Senior VP GreenRoad

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, one of every five fleet vehicles is involved in a crash annually

The direct damage from such a crash ranges between $16k if there are no injuries up to $500k in case of fatality

The average mobile worker who has been involved with a road accident will be absent from work for 12 days

The direct cost resulting from these collisions is $1,877 per employee every year

In an organization with 1,000 field workers, the average cost of collisions is nearly $2 million annually

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CREATING VISIBILITY AROUND DRIVER SAFETY AS A SERVICE MANAGER

What A Service Manager Sees From 30k ft?Dispatchers (gravel level):

“I love those techs who manage to get to the customer on time, no matter what it takes. Adding tight safety adherence will kill our agility and customer satisfaction”

Managers need a 30k ft view on their field force Safety vis-a-vis Performance in order to resolve the conflict

So what can you do with simple tools to avoid pitfalls? The difference lies in what we call the 30,000-foot view versus the ground-level view. As a field service manager, it starts with that visibility.

By nature, field service organizations are all about customer service, and that’s what you want to maintain. But oftentimes, just focusing on that one metric, safety begins to slip from view. A manager should be able to rapidly analyze asset and service performance, safety trends, financial and regulatory exposures. All of these KPIs should be part of your day-to-day monitoring and this can only be done by getting the full picture of risk around your organization. By understanding your risk, you can better understand the needs of your service technicians and make them happier on the road. When they know that they’re headed out on the road and they have a coach with them in the cabin side by side and they know that they’ve been given the tools to perform as best as they can, it leads to faster response times, better customer service, and ultimately happier clients.

David Rodriguez Senior VP GreenRoad

Managers need a 30,000-foot view versus the ground-level view in order to avoid pitfalls

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Identifying common driver errors There are several common driver errors that we’ve identified as creating major issues for both individuals, and by extension, the efficacy of service organizations.

First, not surprisingly, is speed.

Speed becomes an issue when drivers make the link between speeding and being able to do their jobs better. If you are in the energy industry or provide other essential services, the longer that people go without service, the more they’re inconvenienced. In the financial sector when you’re getting systems back up online, the longer that they are down, the more money that your client is losing. Your drivers may be speeding for legitimate reasons, but if they end up in the hospital, then nobody’s going to win. Systems such as GreenRoad can monitor speed, and we can address problems before they become incidents. If the posted speed is 50 miles an hour, that’s the maximum speed that we would expect people to be driving. The point I’m trying to make is that the speed limit is not a target, and when it comes to establishing better driving habits within your workforce, prevention is by far the best cure.

The second challenge is forward planning and anticipation.

When you’re driving a motor vehicle of any size, whether it’s a car, a van, or a bus, the drivers are looking ahead, to the side of the vehicle, using the rearview mirrors or their side-mounted mirrors in order to get 360 degrees of vision and taking in everything that’s happening. However, looking and seeing are two totally different things. Many, many times you see instances of cars pulling out in front of motorcycles. They’ve looked, they’ve seen, but they’ve not recognized the fact that the motorcycle is there even though the motorcyclist has his headlamp on and is wearing a high-visibility jacket, because we get into autopilot when we are performing routine tasks. One of the things that I constantly say to people is, think about what might happen and expect the unexpected. It’s better to anticipate what might go wrong then to wind up missing an appointment with a customer because of assumptive patterns of driving.

The last major challenge on the road is tailgating.

Tailgating is one of the most common frustrations with drivers. How close is too close? The general rule of thumb in all the countries that I’ve worked in is a minimum of two seconds separation in clear driving conditions. One of the safe driving techniques that I’ve been taught was based upon a four-second rule, encouraging drivers to maintain four seconds behind the vehicle in front which provides additional reaction time. It gives you time to analyze the situation, to check your rearview mirror, to ensure that nothing’s going to rear end you, to make the correct decision, and to avoid the incident. Even if your driver is not at fault, avoiding the situation is far better for your organization than becoming involved in it.

Dougie Portwood Director of Strategic Programs GreenRoad

First common driver error: speed

Second common driver error: forward planning and anticipation

Third common driver error: tailgating

SPEEDLIMIT

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Best practices for benchmarking your driversIf you have no system in place for monitoring what your drivers are doing on the road, you have no visibility. They may be doing a good job, or they may be taking unacceptable risks. If you can get insight into what your drivers are doing, you can start to identify where your issues are and who your issues are, allowing you to develop a risk strategy. That allows you to put a management risk strategy in place, reduce that road risk, start to develop a baseline, and begin to measure your improvement and lower your risks.

NO VISIBILITY — Not having the capability of knowing how all your drivers are doing on the road leaves you in the dark.

The traditional way to diagnose driver patterns is through driver ride-alongs– which are expensive, spot checks only, and not scalable for the number of drivers you may have. By that time, the damage has been done. Are they using defensive driving (Smith System) and being aware of their surroundings? You could have invested in a system, but how do you know if your drivers are practicing?

GAIN INSIGHT — Once you know what your drivers are doing you can categorize your drivers by low, medium, and high-risk. Focus efforts on high-risk drivers and change behavior while equally praising and rewarding low risk drivers.

MANAGE CHANGE & DRIVER BEHAVIOR — Rome wasn’t built in a day. Performance isn’t going to improve overnight but it’s important to develop an approach that is sustainable. Zoning in on medium and high-risk drivers helps you improve driver behavior across your fleet. Ultimately, changing driver behavior for the better creates a better fleet. When drivers know there is uniformity competition around speed is greatly reduced.

No Visibility

Gain Insight

Manage Change & Driver Behavior

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KEY RECOMMENDATIONSUNFREEZE

Helping stakeholders recognize that change is indeed necessary.

CHANGEDeveloping new behaviors, values and attitudes.

RE-FREEZEActions to reinforce and support changes so they

become permanent behaviors.

UNFREEZE — The first step to creating a positive change in driving habits is to take drivers out of a fixed set of habits, opening up their awareness to what they may be doing wrong. Unfreezing behavior means having drivers ask themselves: could I do something better? Could I be more efficient? Could I approach that roundabout in a slightly slower and a slightly more efficient way? Can I plan ahead?

CHANGE — Awareness, combined with coaching and knowledge of how to approach situations leads to positive change. With the right visibility systems in place, you can be confident when changes are occurring.

RE-FREEZE — When positive changes transition into positive habits, the drivers in your organization will be able to re-freeze their behaviors and become comfortable doing the right thing. You will have effectively created a more positive and self-sustaining driving culture.

UNFREEZE

CHANGE

RE-FREEZE

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ABOUT GREENROAD

ABOUT WBR DIGITAL

REFERENCES

GreenRoad helps businesses run safer, more efficient and profitable fleets that tread more lightly on the planet. GreenRoad was founded in 2004 to apply advanced mathematic modeling and cutting-edge technology to the problem of accurately predicting and intercepting risky driving. Today, GreenRoad transforms the way businesses manage their fleets at every level. Our driver and fleet performance management solution engages drivers directly for meaningful, lasting behavior change. At the same time, fleet tracking, mapping and reporting help fleets optimize their daily and strategic operations. For businesses this means safer, greener drivers, lower operational costs and greater customer satisfaction for a clear competitive advantage.

Visit www.greenroad.com to learn more.

WBR Digital’s team of content specialists, marketers, and advisors believe in the power of demand generation with a creative twist. With senior executives from medium-sized businesses and Fortune 1,000 companies attending more than 100 WBR events each year, we are uniquely positioned to energize your organization’s marketing campaigns with a full array of marketing and bespoke content services.

Learn more at www.digital.wbresearch.com

1 The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), USA. http://www.nhtsa.gov/.