Older employers less likely to monitor driver behaviour than younger bosses
Written by: Abaranji Sivakumar, Last updated:14th February 2022
Close to a quarter of employers don’t monitor employees who drive for work, according to new research reported by Fleet News.
The study, commissioned by workforce management company BigChange and road safety charity Brake, highlighted a generation gap with older bosses more likely to not bother keeping tabs on their employees’ driving.
More than half of employers (54 per cent) aged over 55 with responsibility for company drivers don’t do anything to monitor or manage driver behaviour. This is despite nine in ten (87 per cent) citing road safety as an important concern.
In contrast, the number of employers failing to monitor driver behaviour dropped to almost one in 20 for business leaders aged 18 to 34. This means young bosses employing company drivers are nine times more likely than older leaders to take steps such as implementing vehicle tracking, license checks and random drug and alcohol testing.
Cyber over driver safety
The study also revealed that cyber security was a more pressing concern than road safety for business leaders.
Some 57 per cent of leaders considered road safety to be ‘very important’ to the operation and reputation of their organisations. This figure rose to 63 per cent when asked about cyber security matters.
Martin Port, chief executive of BigChange, seemed particularly worried by this last point.
“More than 500 people are killed every year in the UK in crashes involving someone driving for work, yet businesses believe cyber security to be more important than road safety,” he said.
“[They] are more likely to spend time and money reducing the risk of being hacked than they are to cut the chances of their people killing someone in the course of their work.”
Joshua Harris, director of campaigns at Brake, added: “People have gone to jail for failing to manage their company drivers properly, yet an alarming number of organisations take no steps whatsoever to monitor their activities.”
Jenny Smith, product manager for Tele-Gence, commented: “This research uncovers some really intriguing factors surrounding driver monitoring.”
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