Risk management? We'll drink to that!

Whitbread has become one of the first fleets in the country to make use of a new service that links risk and accident management together and has been launched by vehicle management company GE Commercial Finance, Fleet Services in an effort to drive down accidents simultaneously improving employee safety and cutting costs.

The initiative is part of the work-related road safety strategy introduced by the UK's leading hospitality company, which has 35,000 employees and counts brands such as Premier Travel Inn, Brewers Fayre, Beefeater and Costa among its portfolio.

With a fleet of 700 cars plus commercial vehicles and daily rental cars used across the country by many different employees working in a variety of different conditions, implementing a road risk management policy was a major undertaking.

Fleet manager Nigel Trotman said: "We started looking at WRRS seriously in late 2005 and it really took the best part of a year for us to work through our health and safety responsibilities and decide wha we wanted to try and achieve as a company."

Whitbread enlisted the help of GE, which has been providing vehicle funding, contract hire, maintenance and other support services for the company since 1989.

Relationship

Mr Trotman explained: "As part of our relationship with GE, we sit on its Customer Advisory Board, which is a panel of fleet customers that provides guidance on future product development, so we were able to have a major input into the scope of the GE risk management product that we eventually opted to use."

By October 2006, the Whitbread fleet had a written risk management policy and processes in place designed to implement it. The main task now was to unveil the whole programme to drivers. Mr Trotman said: "There is much said in the fleet industry about the importance of creating a safety culture.

"What this really means for us is getting drivers to buy in to the whole idea of thinking about safety on a daily basis, encouraging them to take responsibility for their own behaviour and also asking them to consider continually how to make the fl eet as a whole safer. The first step we took was for our human resources director to write to every company car driver across the organisation to introduce the risk management measures we were putting in place and outline the main elements."

The two main tasks introduced to drivers initially were the need to undergo an individual risk assessment, initially online, and also to present driving licences for examination.

He continued: "The online training has been very well received and we have put an additional 160 drivers through in-car training who we feel are at a higher risk. Generally, this has been very well received and has had the desired effect - it has made drivers think about their driving, how their behaviour on the road can contribute to their own safety and that of others. It has set the fleet safety culture at Whitbread in motion."

Driving licence checks have been a little more difficult to undertake, with some drivers being slow to present their documents for checking. Mr Trotman explained: "I don't think that there is any desire on the part of drivers to hide what is on their licence. Instead, it is more a question of not seeing any added value from bringing their licence to work, whereas most people are at least curious about online assessments and driver training.

"However, we have now seen them all and from looking at licences, we have a small number of drivers on nine points and quite a number with three or more. This is pretty much as expected and has given us a useful measure when it comes to identifying our 'at risk' drivers. As a result, in some cases, we have taken additional action such as training." Any Whitbread driver involved in a crash where damage costs exceed a threshold receives a follow-up call from the GE risk management team that is intended to get the driver's version of events via a thorough post-accident review.

Rich Green, managing director at GE Fleet Services, explained: "When a Whitbread driver has an accident, the details are sent overnight from our accident management team to our risk management department. They discuss the accident with the driver, including factors such as the weather, how long the driver had been behind the wheel and how busy their schedule had been that day?

"All of this information is taken down from the driver while it is still fresh in their mind - and Whitbread is then contacted with appropriate recommendations for the individual if it is felt that any action is necessary.

Thinking

"This kind of joined-up thinking linking accident and risk management seems obvious but actually happens in very few fleets. Often, separate procedures exist for capturing risk and accident management information and, because of the need to deal with immediate tasks in the event of an accident such as getting the vehicle and driver back on the road, risk management can very easily take a back seat."

Examples of the system in action so far include a Whitbread driver who has chosen to undertake an advanced driving course following two accidents in quick succession, and another who suffered a loss of confi dence behind the wheel following an accident on the M25 - a problem solved with an accompanied driver by a specialist instructor.

Mr Trotman added: "This way of working seems to be effective. It works to create a safety culture by getting the driver thinking about the causes of accidents."

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