The 5-Step Action Plan HR and Safety Need to Be Aligned

Creating a world-class safety training program requires your HR and Safety departments to be aligned.

Safety is more than new-hire training, monthly meetings, and MVR checks. If you want a meaningful reduction in your non-CDL fleet accidents and cost of loss, you need to develop a safety-centric culture.

You need every department and employee aligned on your mission to reduce accidents and make your employees safer. Perhaps most importantly, you need to align HR and your safety department.

Download eBook: How to Choose a Defensive Driver Safety Program

HR plays as big a role in safety as your drivers and safety managers do. HR selects, hires, and promotes individuals in your company. If they aren’t hiring safety-conscious people, your company will suffer. Moreover, they help you retain those employees who care about preventing accidents.

So where do you begin? Shifting your company culture is a big undertaking, but we’ve got good news: we’ve already laid the groundwork for you.

Follow our 5 step action plan to align the safety department with HR so you're making safe drivers and retaining them to continue working for you.

 1. The Hiring Process

If you want to reduce your accidents, you need to think about the type of people you’re putting behind the wheel of company vehicles.

Are you hiring drivers who are risk-averse, who obey traffic laws, and who value their own safety and the safety of others? Or, are you hiring drivers who want to speed, who ignore the dangers of driving, and who value getting somewhere quickly over getting somewhere safely?

The problem is, you can’t train drivers to value safety. They either do or they don’t. That’s why you need to hire for it.

You need your HR department to implement a holistic selection and hiring process to weed out the risk-averse drivers. You can do so with predictive selection and hiring tools such as:

• Personality assessments
• Structured interviews
• Realistic job previews
• Situational judgment tests

You likely don’t need to implement more than a couple of those options. After all, the demand for labor is high and you don’t want to bloat your selection process. However, you can save a lot of money by implementing effective selection tools to determine if you can trust someone behind the wheel for your company.

2. Orientation

Orientation is not filling out paperwork and training employees on how to do the job. Orientation is educating new hires about the company, the culture, and why they made a great decision to work for you. You need to give them the “firm handshake and pat on the back” for joining your team.

For your orientation process, you want to align your new hires with your company's expectations. Explain to them:

• How they can expect to be treated
• How valuable they are to you
• What you expect from them
• That safety and preventing accidents is the most important part of their job

In other words, use your orientation process to improve employee retention and align your new hires with your safety culture.

When you establish your expectations upfront about putting safety first, you will have a much bigger impact on positively influencing your employees to prevent accidents.

3. New-Hire Training

Now that you’ve hired safety-conscious employees and aligned them to your safety-centric culture, it’s time to begin their new-hire training.

What comes to mind when you think of new-hire training? Depending on your industry, there is a lot your employees need to learn. However, it’s crucial to include defensive driving training.

You can’t rely on a clean MVR and driver’s-ed to reduce your company’s risk of accidents. The fact is, driving is the most dangerous thing your employees do regardless of their industry. They face the most risk for accidents and injuries when they’re behind the wheel.

The easiest way to handle defensive driver training is to enroll your new hires in online self-directed training before day one. A program like The Fleet Safety Course offers world-class safety training that all of your employees can easily access from any smart device with an internet connection.

Implementing effective safety training for new hires will:

• Reduce your accidents and injuries
• Reduce your cost of loss
• Save you valuable time, money, and resources coordinating safety training

4. On-Going Safety Training

Safety training is not a “one-and-done” type of deal. If you don’t use it, you lose it. In other words, if you don’t continuously provide safety training for your employees, they put your company at high risk of accidents.

There are programs out there that make it easy to offer continued safety training and education.

We highly recommend investing in a product like The Monthly Safety Initiative to host monthly safety meetings focused on a loss-leading indicator.

Each month, gather your drivers to cover a specific risk they face behind the wheel and how they can make themselves safer.

By following this training cycle, you will:

• Reduce your accidents and cost of loss by 20% or more
• Have more engaged, competent employees
• Improve employee retention because your drivers know you care about their well-being

5. Leadership Development

You’ve hired safety-conscious drivers. You’ve aligned them with your safety culture. You’ve trained them on safe driving practices. Now, you need to invest resources into keeping them at your company.

Your non-CDL driver turnover is costing you big time. It can cost you thousands of dollars to replace just one employee. So why are employees quitting? It’s not your equipment, the work you offer, or even the compensation package. It’s your managers.

Employees don’t quit their job - they quit their bosses.  Just like you train drivers on how to drive defensively, you need to train your managers on how to improve productivity, their soft skills, and your company’s driver retention.

A program like The Leadership Development Course makes this easy. When you implement training for your frontline leaders and managers, you will enjoy:

• Higher retention rates
• Reduced cost of turnover
• Fewer headaches caused by inefficiencies

Invest in your leaders to improve your organization.

Safety Doesn’t Exist in a Vacuum

If you have poor safety results, there’s no silver bullet. It’s not just your trainers, your drivers, your equipment, or any one thing.

You need to implement a holistic approach to aligning your safety and HR departments. Our five-step plan will help you:

• Reduce accidents and injuries by 20%
• Save more money than you spend on these practices
• Achieve operational excellence
• Implement a world-class safety training program

You don’t have to limp along with mediocre results. Your organization can thrive if you take action today.