Being a business owner involves a lot of responsibility.  When you have commercial autos, you become responsible for the safety of your drivers and other road users.

That can be a lot to take on, so the best way to deal with it is to share the responsibility.  To create a culture where everybody shares the need to do the right thing.  That’s especially important for driving.  If you can create a safe driving culture in your business, you make everyone responsible for road safety. So how do you create a safer driver?

Talk About Safer Driving

The first step is to open up an internal dialogue about driver safety.  You can do this through internal newsletters, emails, brochures or even workshops.  Include your employees in the conversation.  Let them share their stories and their concerns.  The more included your employees feel, the more they’ll get involved in pushing that safe driving culture.

Monitor Driving

It’s important that you understand how your employees drive when they are representing your business.  Driver training can only tell you so much about how an employee drives on a daily basis. Arrange regular monitored driving sessions or use GPS driver behavior monitoring systems and get a read on how safe your commercial fleet really is.

Reward Safer Driving

You want your commercial drivers, and your staff that drive to work, to be safe on the road.  So reward the ones who overachieve in this area.  Drivers that demonstrate a clear commitment to safer driving or show real improvement earn prizes or work-related benefits.

Lead by Example

The most important thing is to lead by example.  If you want to encourage safer driving  in your business, you need to drive safer too.  Whenever you want to influence your employees, you need to practice what you preach.  Any campaign to encourage safer driving will be derailed if you’re spotted speeding on your way into work.  This kind of culture change needs to be all-inclusive and all-inclusive includes you.

At Insurance Brokers of MN, Inc. we have detailed programs we can assist you in implementing.  Contact our home office and we will be happy to provide information.