Create a Healthier Work Environment With a Workflow Management Solution

Driver safety is a concern wherever you go — whether it’s down the street or around the globe. The worldwide statistics are telling us much more needs to be done to make driving safer: about 1.35 million people die in vehicle crashes every year and 50 million more are injured or disabled. Worldwide, motor vehicle crashes cost about $518 billion, not including the cost of societal damage.

Safe driving is important to everyone. Especially those in the mobility industry. As a fleet manager, your job is to ensure your fleet is successful, safe, and profitable. The last thing you want is your drivers getting into motor vehicle accidents — especially when they could have been avoided. This puts the safety and well-being of your workforce on the line and has costly repercussions:

• Accidents lead to a drop in productivity and hurt the company’s bottom line.
• Your drivers may have to be hospitalized and your company may be held liable for damages and injuries.
• Assets involved in the crash may have to be repaired or replaced altogether.
• A company without strong safety regulations is bad for morale and makes drivers feel as though they are not valued.

The majority of fleet accidents are due to driver error and can be prevented. By taking action and putting accident prevention procedures in place, you will be saving both money and human lives.

Here at Tourmo, we are dedicated to finding new ways to make driving safer. We are focused on enhancing fleet safety, and in doing so, you are creating a safer place for everyone. Our product goes beyond providing basic driving behavior. Here are four ways in which our workflow management tool can create a safer and healthier work environment:

1. Fitness for Duty
2. Vehicle Quality Audits
3. Custom Training
4. Employee Wellness

Our workflow management system’s main purpose is to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time. It utilizes Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to meet the needs of your company while following your specific rules and procedures. Every workflow is customizable and tailored to your people, industry, and business goals. For more information on exactly how our technology works and how it can be integrated into your business click here.

1. Fitness for Duty

Whether you’re a pilot flying a plane or a driver guiding a semi down the highway, you are responsible for lives and, therefore, must always be fit to operate in the skies or on the road. Thankfully, most people do not intend to complete a trip while their driving is impaired. Our workflow management system provides every driver with a driving fitness questionnaire before the start of their shift (similar to the ones pilots go through before their flight). The purpose of this questionnaire is to keep employees from going through the motions of their job without mindfully thinking about their actions and subsequent outcomes.

Here are some examples of questions that our clients have posed to their drivers in the past: Have they had anything to drink that day, if they are using any prescription medications, how they are feeling physically and emotionally, what mood they’re in, how much sleep they got the night before and if they are aware of the consequences of disregarding any of the previous symptoms.

The driver must answer all these questions before they begin their shift. By presenting drivers with this questionnaire, you are raising self-awareness, giving employees the chance to act in their own best interest, reminding your employees of company policy, and asking that they consider their own physical and mental state before operating heavy machinery.

All workflows are interactive, so drivers must check yes, no, or clarify each answer. This way you have their responses on file. In the case of an accident or insurance claim, you will have a record of your drivers’ answers to these fitness questions. For example, for companies that work with 3rd party fleets, this can either excuse your company of liability since you took steps to prevent unfit drivers from driving.

2. Vehicle Quality Audits

Although your drivers are the most important assets of your business, it is still extremely important that the vehicle is in top safety condition as well. Vehicle Quality Audits are recurring task assignments that help to ensure all vehicle assets are caught up on mechanic updates and maintenance quality.

An example of such workflows includes a daily walk-around requirement (drivers must do a walk-around inspection of their vehicles to look for any damage or issues). Another example may be a weekly reminder to get their vehicle cleaned or a monthly trip to the mechanic. In some industries such as the Passenger Transit, these tasks are required daily to ensure passenger safety and satisfaction – yet somehow we’ve all experienced a less-than-sparkling public bus. With our Vehicle Quality Audits, you can ensure that your passengers experience the satisfaction of a clean and safe vehicle with every trip.

Our workflow management solution mandates your workforce to keep up on all areas of vehicle maintenance. This increases safety for both drivers and passengers by decreasing the chances that a malfunction occurs and lowers your maintenance costs in the long run. Whether manually reported by the driver or automatically reported by the system (i.e., engine light goes on), our workflow engine makes sure that reported damages are automatically assigned to the right department immediately, increasing the transparency and productivity of your operations.

3. Custom Training Workflows

The transportation industry has experienced a significant shortage of truck drivers in the last couple of years. This driver shortage is putting massive pressure on the fleet industry to expedite their hiring processes. This has led to swifter onboarding programs that may not be as thorough as they have been in the past. Training programs are rushed, and employee pickings are slim, leading to many fleet managers to attribute to the rising number of motor vehicle accidents.

Our workflow management solution provides the newly hired drivers with custom training workflows based on their unique driving behavior performance. These training workflows mandate a variety of different driving courses aimed at enhancing defensive driving, focus, and overall road awareness. Each onboarding training workflow is personalized because it requires new hires to focus more or less on certain topics and themes depending on their individual performance. This way, the hiring process is more efficient and effective because it can be tailored to each driver’s skill set.

It is impossible to prevent all accidents, but building a strong safety foundation, robust training workflow, and the strict enforcement of company policy can prevent many accidents from occurring. These safety training workflows should not only be mandatory for new hires but current employees as well. Course content is continuously updated, and current drivers can be required to brush up on their course knowledge monthly, annually, or as indicated by their safe driving performance.

Although our custom training workflows may take more time than a standardized process, they provide an effective and ongoing training program to drivers based on their ability, experience, and knowledge. It is a scientifically-backed fact that everyone processes information differently and learns at a different pace. Advocating for individualized training programs such as Tourmo's custom training workflows promotes driver safety and company morale by making employees feel as though they are valued and treated as individuals.

4. Employee Wellness Workflows

Another way our workflow management system helps with fleet safety is through employee wellness workflows. A huge part of ensuring driver safety is investing in driver wellness. The pressure for companies to keep up with powerhouses, such as Amazon’s same-day delivery, is increasing every day. Demands for faster deliveries and cheaper prices can lead to unreasonable expectations of employees and result in being overworked, unhealthy behaviors, and unsafe driving practices. A wellness workflow helps ensure that employees continuously take care of their physical and mental health.

While this may seem to simply be a fun bonus for employees, it has a lasting effect on the safety and productivity of your workforce. Wellness workflows may send out push notifications to drivers, reminding them to take breaks, get enough sleep, and get active. These simple reminders show employees that their company is not only concerned with success but with the well being of their people. An example of a well-being assignment may be: “Take a walk around the block after you stop for lunch.” This encourages drivers who sit all day to get active and get some steps in. A well-being notification may say, “The National Health Society recommends that adults get 7-9 hours of sleep every night.” Other examples of wellness workflows may include reminders to exercise, drink plenty of water, call a friend or family member, or simply to take a break and do something they enjoy. These mandated tasks keep your workforce in good health as well as boost employee morale that their management cares about their well being more than a profit. It also helps the company from having employees work past the legal amount (and helping with government compliance regulations) by making drivers aware of the hours of service guidelines.

Our wellness workflow also provides users with the tools to plan their trips. This feature is called Journey Management and allows drivers to plan out exactly where they’re going to stop, how long they are going to drive for, and where they’re going to eat. Drivers who use our wellness workflow to carefully plan their journeys are more likely to remain alert and vigilant at the wheel, increasing personal safety and the safety of those sharing the road.

From the beginning, Tourmo has been driven with a mission to improve driver behavior and safety with an easy to deploy and device agnostic approach. Since then, we’ve gone above and beyond and are using AI-powered technology to make our solutions improve safety, compliance, efficiency and satisfaction of our clients’ workforce. Tourmo's workflow management feature is flexible, interactive and collaborative and can be tailored specifically to your company’s needs ensuring the right information to the right people at the right time. Our goal is to enable large enterprises to reduce complexity in the way they manage their transportation workforce, vehicles, and networks of fleets.