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When it comes to fleet safety, it’s not enough to have rules and regulations, you must be able to prove that you monitor and enforce them. You should also be able to gauge your employees’ performances against those standards and then–based on the results–act accordingly.

What you need is a measuring stick. It’s the only reliable way to confidently make improvements around your operation, figure out which areas need shoring up, which might save money, or who you have to retrain.

Among the best measuring devices is your provincial transport ministry’s commercial fleet abstract. This is your company’s report card and it focuses on two critical areas: driver behaviour and vehicle maintenance. Learn to read the abstract–including what’s between the lines–and you’ll wonder how you ever worked without it.

For example, at performance-review time, the abstract can tell you how your vehicles scored in roadside inspections. If things have improved over the years–for example, if you can track a decrease in the number of broken tail light violations–you should recognize and even reward the people responsible. (Never underestimate the power of positive feedback.)
But if the trending is negative, you’ll want your maintenance technicians to understand very specifically which problems have been documented. And that raises another question. Do your techs even know what kind of information these provincial abstracts record? They should.

Regulations require that you review a driver’s abstract every year. So why don’t you do it twice a year? If you spot problem behaviours early on, you can either introduce awareness campaigns or training sessions. Ditto for accident trends. By grouping the top three collision types you can take corrective action, whether it means more training, regular driver performance reviews, installing technology such as sensors or governors, or a combination of these. If you want a top-drawer workforce, you need consistent coaching, evaluation, and reinforcement.

It’s not only “over the road” action that has to be assessed. What goes on around the docks and yard is also crucial. Just think how non-driving WCB claims can inflate your cost of doing business. Does your safety staff even worry about non-driving issues? If you’re not in control of your docks, your WCB costs can go through the roof. And if you’re like many other fleets, the person watching over this is a driving expert, not an ergonomics pro. Safety has many areas of specialized disciplines.

If dock operations go unchecked, you could end up spending time with your provincial or federal labour agency, depending on your fleet’s area of operation.

For help in this area, try your provincial WCB account manager. You’ll be surprised how many resources the government can send your way if you ask. They know ongoing training is just as important for yard and dock personnel as it is for drivers.

Do your employees know their responsibilities under the Canada Labour Code or provincial workplace laws? Again, they should, because your dock employees have to act as your eyes and ears, watching for potential problems.

Supervisors have to be trained and they have to spend time on each shift doing basic checks to ensure the workplace is safe. If your people (supervisors and employees) are doing this, then they are part of the solution and your key to safety success.

If your yard and dock workers know and understand the required safe-work processes, they’ll be more likely to stay out of harm’s way. If you have trained them, do you monitor their actions in the workplace to ensure that they’re following the rules?

Train, measure, monitor. These are three steps to ensuring due diligence in the safety department.