This isn’t the first time BusinessCar has waxed lyrical about driver training.
The merits of prepping your staff for life on the road are well documented: yes, there’s a cost attached, but there’s also a hefty return on investment if you tot up fewer accidents, the resultant lack of repair bills and a lower fuel outlay if a bit of eco training is involved – not to mention covering your back from a risk perspective with the constant shadow of the corporate manslaughter act in the background.
So the benefits speak for themselves. But if that’s the case, then why aren’t more companies implementing driver training programmes for their employees? A recent survey of 1000 business drivers by top five leasing company ALD revealed that only 41% had undergone any professional training at all and less than 2% expected any within the coming year, so it obviously isn’t catching on.
Helen Fisk, auto solutions manager at ALD, says the economy is predictably to blame in a lot of cases, but there are other reasons behind it: “I think the economy’s got a role to play. Driver training is the first thing that drops when budgets are tight.
“Training has traditionally been quite inflexible – you might have to have half a day or a whole day and a business often can’t justify that amount of downtime. What we’re looking at now is flexibility with grouping different customers together so you can have more than one company on one day and at different locations.”
Simon Elstow, training manager at the Institute of Advanced Motorists’ Drive and Survive corporate driver training programme, believes it isn’t just a cost thing – the attitude and general behaviour of the firm in question has as much to do with it as the price tag.
“The reasons are as varied as the culture of the organisations,” he says. “British Rail, for example, which doesn’t exist any more but was split into loads of different companies – an organisation like that is always going to be difficult.
“They did driver training, but didn’t bother to tell people why. They spent the money, but didn’t want to tell people why they were doing it.
“At the other end of the spectrum you’ve an organisation like BP, where all the staff know why they’re doing it and they’ve done it loads of times. They always get something out of it and if they don’t, they complain. It’s great.”
Elstow maintains that employees whose main job is driving are far more likely to go through a training programme than other staff, but management often won’t consider it for those who still drive for work but whose main job responsibilities lie elsewhere.
“If the market sector has a high percentage of CPC [Certificate of Professional Competence] drivers, you’ll see a lot of training. That’s the only sector where training is mandatory, but that’s still new. Previously that group didn’t have to do much training at all. Logistics is another one.
“The problem is that we’re almost always dealing with individuals who are required to drive for their job but driving is not their primary job function. The attitude is, ‘why would you want training for something that isn’t your primary skill?'”
Sorting priorities
Other experts believes that the main issue is that training is neither a requirement, nor is it deemed essential by most outfits. Graham Hurdle, MD of online training firm E-Training World, says the biggest problem is that it just falls down the list of priorities, and this only changes when it’s too late.
“Driver training is more of a planning issue. It therefore sits in the ‘important but not urgent’ box, and because fleet managers are busy they struggle to get to it. Interestingly, we’ve seen a number of instances when assessment and training has shifted quickly. to the ‘urgent and important’ box, simply because a driver has had a serious accident and the company is suddenly feeling exposed.”
Roddy Graham, commercial director of Leasedrive and chairman of the Institute of Car Fleet Management, agrees that it’s something that usually just isn’t on fleet operators’ radars: “Driver training is much more of a ‘nice to have’ than a ‘need to have’ in the eye of the fleet operator. It doesn’t matter how much indicative evidence you put forward to show that it’s worthwhile, it’s still a difficult argument to win.”
ALD’s survey’s numbers don’t tell the whole story, though. Leasing giant Leaseplan has reported a recent increase in businesses buying into driving training schemes – but not at the behest of fleet managers.
Jennifer Gradden, account director for fleet risk solutions at Leaseplan, explains: “We’ve certainly seen similar statistics [to the ALD survey] ourselves. That said, I have noticed a marked increase in the number of companies putting their drivers through training programmes.
“Often this has been HR-driven as opposed to driven by the fleet manager. It can be part of a wellbeing strategy and also incorporates grey fleet as well as the core company car fleet.”
A fruitless venture
Of the companies that already put their staff through training, the statistics and the general consensus among those in the know suggests that a lot of them are simply putting employees through one training programme either when they join the company or on a single, random occasion, which might seem worthwhile at the time but has a very limited effect in the long run.
Graham explains: “It’s a complete waste of money. Unless you’re committed, that’s almost just an HR box-ticking exercise. You’re not going to change the culture [of the business] that way.”
The IAM’s Elstow says this approach only works for a small minority of drivers: “It’s very common for companies to do it once but not again. Once they’ve had some driver training, some of the drivers will respond extremely well to it.
“We know that because we bump into some of them 10 years down the line when they’re in a different job and they say things like ‘that training was really worthwhile’. That’s only a small number though; the large proportion of drivers will lapse back into their normal habits.”
The one-stop shop approach can actually be beneficial in certain circumstances, though. Graham says a one-off bout of training is worth it if you’ve got temporary staff joining from overseas.
“Where I do believe that works is when you’ve got a lot of ex-pat workers spending maybe a year or two in the UK. That’s an absolute must and a lot of companies don’t do it,” he says. “The cost to them is absolutely phenomenal in terms of damage, fines, things like that. There’s real value in that without any shadow of a doubt and some driver training firms are excellent at this.”
Cash or crash
There are cases where the fleet manager sets the wheels in motion with a programme, but freeing up the cash from upper management can slow the whole process down, leaving drivers and the company exposed for longer if the training is really needed.
Gradden has experience of such schemes being held up because the individual driving the programme has to wait for longer than expected until the funds are available.
“I have seen delays. There have been cases where companies have said ‘right, we know we need to do this but it needs to fall into next year’s budget’,” she says.
The idea of buying into some training might also be something that’s construed as far too costly by cash-limited SMEs, or at least perceived to be something that’s the preserve of larger, blue-chip companies. If you’re a business running a fleet of five vans, for example, you might automatically assume it’s something that just doesn’t apply to you.
There are options open to a small business with a limited number of drivers, some of which have the capacity to throw up decent results because of their more intimate nature.
Gradden explains: “It wouldn’t be too expensive to do a one-to-one training programme and you could get good results out of that.
“With online assessment you can capture the attitudes to risk and responses and expand on that. It’s quite useful as a low-cost exercise.”
Hurdle argues that the cost really isn’t a barrier to businesses, even at this level: “The idea of training being expensive is a myth – £30 per driver per year is not a lot of money. For a small firm with five vans, you’d spend that on a buffet at the board meeting to review driver training!”
The reality is, though, that’s it’s an area where training is much neglected, which goes some way to explaining the shortfall, as Gradden concedes: “We have quite a few SME programmes in place but they tend to be more around compliance. [Small companies are] certainly an area where training is less likely to happen.”
ICFM’s Graham admits that you really need to be managing the drivers independently at this level, and a training course, for small firms, probably isn’t the answer: “It’s an old-fashioned answer but if I’m the owner of a small business then I should be managing [the drivers]. You need to be micro-managing that sort of thing.”
