06 Nov Safety Culture – Reflection on NRSPP “Lessons and themes”

As an industry, we constantly hear about safety and being champions of the safety culture within an organisation. Simply look at most company websites and the word SAFETY sits front and centre.

Let’s be honest, we all want to work in an environment that fosters safety and commits heavily to building an inclusive safety culture.

To help better understand safety culture in the context of your business, we decided to reflect on some of the key points from the National Road Safety Partnership Program Lessons and Themes drawn from NRSPP Case Studies.

Let’s take a look at some of these now.

“Safety Culture is altruistic, it’s just good business. So, let’s talk Efficiency Dividend”

• Investing in road safety solutions means significant bottom-line benefits
• Recognition
• Insurance premiums reduced
• Focusing on safety builds a strong business reputation
• Road safety is the central common element. If safety is doing well, so are all sectors of the company and therefore, the bottom line

So how do you apply safety to your on-road risk footprint? What is your current risk footprint?

As an industry, systems have been mandated without any clearly defined risk-mitigating processes. It is great that they can highlight risk issues with telematic style data, but there is little understanding of the driver’s behaviour – otherwise known as “root cause”.

Without root cause data, your ability to effectively impact your on-road risk footprint is greatly diminished. There is so much focus on capturing risk, but not on understanding why or what caused a risky situation.

This means the cycle of risk will continue because you can’t fix what you don’t understand – or to use the cliché “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”.

“Protecting your Employees should be priority Numero Uno”

Driving (safely or otherwise) is a largely subconscious behaviour. The meaning of subconscious can be subliminal, unconscious, unintentional or involuntary. Professional drivers don’t make deliberately unsafe decisions, they generally just have bad habits. Most companies don’t have a mechanism to capture these risky subconscious habits or near misses.

“Technology can assist in all aspects of Safety”

As a sport-loving nation, per capita, we punch way above our weight. EVERY top-performing sports person uses video coaching to tweak the minor deficiencies in technique to improve. Of equal importance, coaches use video to build on unique strengths to reinforce them. So, if top sportspeople can do this and achieve dramatic improvement, why wouldn’t you want to give your drivers the same opportunity to improve and ultimately be the best on ground?

“How to manage technology so that staff understand it’s importance, how it works, the driver safety value and why the employer utilises it”

DriveCam will provide you with factual, objective risk profiles of every driver in your fleet. By using video coaching, you can address the root cause of behaviours and potentially risky subconscious habits.

Once addressed, the driver becomes safer and more aware, which means getting home to his or her family at the end of every shift. Let’s not forget provisions to provide positive feedback when a driver displays a risk-free profile. Make an example of that person! Praise and admiration for being safe means other employees will strive to model themselves on that person. It’s a win-win when that elusive “Inclusive Safety Culture” is realised and greater productivity is achieved.

To accomplish risk improvement, managers must be active, positive and consistently interact with drivers. It’s a human solution to a human problem. Drivers are humans and not machines, so treat them accordingly and safety attitudes will change.

Companies who utilise the DriveCam program train and coach their drivers to become safer and have a heightened conscious awareness of mitigating risk from their daily routines.

We all want increased safety for our drivers. We are all passionate about our industry. Let’s make driver safety priority Numero Uno – its everyone’s responsibility! Contact our team today!