The Health and Safety at Work Act brought significant changes to businesses around New Zealand when it came into force on 4 April 2016. Under the Act, every employee, from owners to drivers in a business, belongs to the Chain of Responsibility and have a primary duty of care to ensure their own and other employee's health and safety at work. They must exercise due diligence to assure that the organisation complies with that duty. And they must take reasonable steps to ensure that they are kept informed of risks and hazards.
Build Your Solution Get the eBookEnsuring duty of care is particularly challenging when you have a mobile workforce, as a vehicle is considered a workplace. To implement and monitor policies around mobile workforce safety, you must have in place a workable health and safety policy.
For businesses with a mobile workforce, ‘monitoring workplace conditions’ means being able to track the safety conditions and status of vehicles and drivers at all times. Our fleet management solution lets you locate an employee in his/her vehicle to within four metres. This means you can track drivers and vehicles wherever they go. Even where network coverage is poor, managers can still track an employee’s last recorded vehicle location - something reliance on mobile phones alone cannot provide.
You must ensure your vehicles are well maintained and fit for purpose. Teletrac Navman fleet and safety management software enables businesses to set up flags and automatic alerts when vehicles and equipment are due for maintenance, based on dates, performance or engine hours. These alerts can be set up in advance to ensure fleet managers have the time to call-in the vehicle or equipment for scheduled maintenance.
Fleet management technologies enable businesses to monitor and remedy any potentially unacceptable behaviour, such as speeding or harsh braking. These solutions also allow businesses to build ongoing records around driver compliance to health and safety policies. Businesses can then track and manage performance using objective statistics around specific driving behaviour when addressing such issues with employees.
It is recognised that working long hours and night shifts can leave drivers tired, increasing the risk of being involved in incidents whilst on the road. Employers have a proactive duty to manage driver journeys and ensure they have sufficient rest to prevent driver fatigue. The software enables you to monitor the entire workday for an individual driver including time spent driving, loading and stationary ensuring that drivers are taking appropriate rests and stay safe.
