According to the road safety forum Roadsafe, almost three times as many employees die or are seriously injured while driving on company business, compared with other work environments. On top of the human cost of driving accidents, HSE research has revealed that for every £1 recovered through insurance, between £8 and £36 may be lost via uninsured costs such as lost time in wages, lost orders, legal fees and other damages. 

One employer that has taken the initiative on driver safety is Tesco.com. Over the last two years the retail empire's online grocery delivery service has not only ramped up safety standards among its drivers but also now grows its own driver trainers to maintain the improvement. Its efforts were recognised during RoSPA's (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents') recent set of safety awards when Tesco.com won the fleet safety prize, the MORR Trophy, in recognition of what RoSPA described as its "comprehensive approach to managing occupational road risk".

Tesco launched its dot.com grocery shopping service in 2000. The service, which enables customers to order their groceries online and have them delivered by van from their local Tesco store, has proved wildly successful and the scale of the operation today is huge, with around 1900 deliveries a day and more than 5000 drivers - known as customer delivery assistants (CDAs) - taking groceries to customers' homes all over the UK.

But with the service's growing success, road safety became a concern for its management.

"When dot.com was established, we'd take drivers with just a clean driving licence, as they handle vans under three and-a-half tonnes," recalls Andy Brown, operations manager at Tesco.com. "But we realised over time that, with rising accident rates and costs, we needed to take some action."

Outside in

Three years ago, the firm trialled a driver safety programme using an external team of consultants and trainers. But, admits Brown, "it wasn't showing any real benefits."

The firm then hit on the idea of using its own driving trainers. "RoSPA was one of the organisations that provided the consultants and driver trainers to us," says Brown, "and we sat down with them and said, 'OK, this isn't working, what would it really take to do this properly?'

"The decision was taken that for long-term investment at Tesco we would need our own internal people and what we needed was assistance in training those people and training coverage while we rolled out the programme. RoSPA worked with us to help train our team of trainers and provide contractors to train and assess drivers until we had our own people ready."

The company has so far rolled out the training programme to more than 200 sites and has 17 in-house driving instructors, supported by an expanding team of driving assessors, who are charged with assessing driver applicants. The new heavy emphasis on road safety is reflected in the fact less than a quarter of new applicants now qualify to join the CDA training programme.

Weeding out

"To apply to be a CDA you must be over 18 and have a clean driving licence," says Brown. "The job suits a lot of different people, from one of the first jobs for young workers to semi-retired people who work part time for us during the week. Whatever their background, they are in a customer-facing role - not only at the doorstep but the way they drive and deal with other road users.

"We believe there are many aspects to driving safely and a huge part is about attitude. You can help and train people with technical driving skills but there are some people who don't have the right approach in the first place."

Each applicant goes through a short interview and their map-reading ability and driving licence is checked.

The driving assessment then begins. Would-be CDAs take out a Tesco.com van for around an hour accompanied by either a training instructor or assessor who checks their driving is up to standard and that, says Brown, "they're going to be safe and good ambassadors for Tesco on the road."

Those who make the grade are given a full one-day training session,

Beyond the wheel

But the driver trainers don't just concentrate on driving instruction.
 
"When we started we probably thought they would," says Brown, "but it's evolved to include a much wider set of skills."

These cover all aspects of the job, from carrying out maintenance and safety checks on the vans before they leave the store, to driving techniques and customer service at the door.

The vehicle checks, along with manual handling training (over and above the guidance employees receive in a standard Tesco induction), are seen as the most important safety elements, along with safe driving.

All drivers are trained how to check their vehicles and make sure they are safe to take out in the morning, verifying tyres, lights and all other essential parts are sound and working.

New drivers are buddied up with existing drivers to watch and learn until they have passed a validation test. The test requires them to carry out a whole shift with a driving instructor who, while coaching the CDA on their driving, will also assess whether they are of a good enough standard to pass. Once validated, a new driver will again buddy up with a more experienced CDA, but this time will do all the driving.

As the programme is rolled out, driver training, albeit with shorter sessions, is being extended to existing Tesco.com drivers. This course includes "defensive driving" training, which helps drivers anticipate potential problems or hazards ahead.

Existing drivers must also pass a validation test, which all CDAs subsequently take once a year. Tesco has agreed with the unions representing drivers that they can fail two validation tests. On the first occasion, they are advised on the next steps they need to achieve a pass the second time. If they fail again, they sit down and discuss the issue with their manager who at this stage must point out that if they fail a third time, they will be taken off driving duties.

But the scheme isn't just about training. While the driving validations and assessments allow Tesco.com to ensure it is managing the standard of its drivers from when they start, a monitoring group, the Accident Review Board (ARB), takes the process a stage further by scrutinising the performance of all drivers.

"The ARB enables us to manage ongoing risks," says Brown, "by identifying higher-risk drivers and giving them additional coaching. ARB is a straightforward process where all accidents are reported centrally, with the description of the accident in the driver's words, including location, road conditions and visibility. We keep the identity of the driver anonymous, but the rest of the information is reviewed in a weekly conference call by the board, which consists of two existing drivers, two driving instructors and a chairman who is also a driving instructor."

The board tries and assess whether the driver could reasonably have prevented the accident. If they conclude that the accident was preventable then the driver is given extra coaching by one of the driving instructors.

For any serious accidents, which have resulted in injuries, the firm has established a separate body. "We've worked with Kent Police on setting up the Serious Accident Investigation Team," explains Brown, "to help us take any relevant learning from a serious incident across the rest of the training programme. The results are used in training, so for instance we have a pack of photos of vans that have been involved in accidents to show 'this is serious, the van you're driving is a lethal weapon'."

Rate cut

Tesco.com has not disclosed its accident rate figures since the introduction of the new driver-training scheme but, according to RoSPA, during an initial six-month trial of the scheme at stores in north London, the accident frequency was halved. Retention rates and morale have risen among CDAs across the country.

For the future, says Brown, as well as rolling out the driving safety programme, the company intends to offer its van drivers the chance to take an advanced driving test. ROADtest, which was jointly developed by RoSPA and DriveTech (UK) in 2006, is the first advanced occupational driving test for people who drive for a living or as part of their jobs. As well as demonstrating good driving skills, ROADtest candidates must show their understanding of key occupational road risk issues such as journey plans, safe speeds, fatigue, mobile phone use and equipment storage.

"All of the Tesco.com driving instructors are already trained to be ROADtest examiners," explains Brown. "The existing Tesco.com test driver training is to bronze level - which is part of a competency grading scheme operated throughout the company for all staff - but we are now aiming to take more established CDAs through the ROADtest to gold level."