At Telent, we take driver safety seriously. As a nationwide business, our technicians, engineers and wider workforce regularly travel to sites and stations to help build, improve, and maintain the UK’s critical digital infrastructure.
That’s why our Driver Safety Group was established, bringing together company-wide representatives to ensure best practices are in place across the business for drivers and employees, and to make sure that they have the knowledge and training to use the roads safely.
The success of the programme has resulted in, most importantly, safer drivers on the road, but also recognition at the UK Fleet Champion Awards 2021. Telent achieved a ‘Highly Commended’ for the Company Driver Safety Award in the Large Fleet category. Entered amongst organisations including category winner Openreach with its 33,000 vehicles, our success of managing our fleet of 1,900 vehicles was commended.
We want every employee to get home safely at the end of each day. And we intend to make sure the public, whom our work directly and indirectly serves, are safe around our drivers and employees on the road.
What is the Driver Safety Group?
The Driver Safety Group involves representatives from across Telent regularly coming together to share ideas, review and analyse driver safety metrics and implement continuous improvement initiatives.
The primary aim is to reduce road risk and support all drivers across the business by regularly raising awareness of road safety, offering useful driver tips on how to remain safe on the road and provide a blended program of driver training to further support those that need it.
We’re constantly striving to find new ways to engage employees into thinking safe and staying safe. This mindset, we believe, minimises the risk we all face on the road. We understand at Telent that if we can find effective ways to engage with drivers, they will understand, remember and apply the communication messages.
A mindful & educational approach
At Telent, we strongly believe that taking a mindful approach to education and awareness positively encourages drivers to act responsibly and stay safe. This approach encourages employees to take personal responsibility for safe driving practices, not just as an individual driver, but also as a responsible colleague, line manager, family member and member of the public. This ensures we are all proactively ‘mindful’ of road related risks, and actions we can take to reduce those risks.
Our driver safety programme consists of driver safety strategy with a clear vision, aim and objectives. We also produce a driver safety manual and supporting policies and compliance procedures, a driver risk management and e-learning program. Practical support is delivered with an in-vehicle assessment and 1-2-1 driver training.
Our online A-Z driver safety library and monthly education and awareness communications campaign help improve safety education. Our library provides regular awareness of driver safety across Telent, educates drivers about new or unfamiliar driver safety laws, and improves the attitude and behaviour towards safe driving practices.
Telent has previously been awarded RoSPA gold at the Fleet Safety Awards for 2019 and 2020.