Workplace road safety guide

Corporate and organisational fleet and road safety is of strong interest to government and government agencies in Australia and New Zealand.

It has been identified that there is great opportunity to engage and assist organisations and corporations in the delivery of road safety and road safety measures to achieve nationally significant road-related trauma reductions.

When the National Road Safety Partnership Program guide was published there was little in the way of robust information or support for those organisations that are wishing to adopt road safety within their places of employment, supply chain and/or community. It should be noted that internationally this is now slowly changing as some governments and non-government organisations take a greater interest in work-related road safety. Due to the identified gap in available resources and support, particularly materials that have an Australian and New Zealand  focus, it was recommended that a practical organisational road safety guide be produced; hence the development of this information and supporting webinar.

The webinar covers the main elements and chapters within the guide, providing opportunity for participants to give feedback, as well as a platform from which questions can be raised and discussed among peers and the three authors of the guide.

According to Hugh MacKay, a well-known and respected psychologist, social researcher and writer, “If we wish to change behaviour, we must modify the environment in which the behaviour occurs, so the changed conditions point to and reinforce the desired behaviour. Mere ‘messages’ alone won’t work.”

Overview of the guide

Statistics show that within Australia and New Zealand a high proportion of road-related trauma is linked to work-related purposes. It should be noted that this trauma is relevant to more than vehicle use although the majority is driving related. It also includes motorcycles, cycling and pedestrian road-related trauma. Therefore, organisations large and small have an opportunity and obligation to share the responsibility to mitigate the risk of road trauma both locally and at a national level.

The primary audience of the guide is work-related road safety practitioners who are looking for guidance on ‘how’ to address the (small or medium or large) organisation’s road safety challenges and opportunities. Each chapter provides some key building blocks to assist in directing organisations to key considerations such as, start out simple and then build complexity; managing to legal requirements is a sound starting point even though it may be far from achieving a safe system approach to road safety. The guide also provides chapter summaries at the start of each chapter for senior management use, providing enough information to ensure that questions are asked across strategic management and the operational functions within an organisation’s road safety-related management and risk mitigation processes.

The guide provides assistance to the user covering five key topic areas presented as individual chapters:

• Chapter one explores a range of commonly identified work-related road safety issues that impact on work-related road safety within organisational settings.
• Chapter two provides an overview of the safe system approach to road safety and assists the reader in better understanding some of the complexities and the interrelationship of key road safety elements.
• Chapter three outlines various practical considerations and opportunities to assist in incorporating and adopting a safe system approach within a work setting.
• Chapter four encourages organisations to consider reviewing their management system capacity to address work-related road safety within an organisation. This is a key step in determining the current position and requires changes to the management system to improve future road safety performance. In particular, it provides a framework which organisations can use that is consistent with World Bank - Country Capacity Review Guidelines and the ISO 39001 Standard.
• Chapter five considers the process of auditing, monitoring and evaluation required for continuous improvement.

Ultimately, road safety, both within an organisation and in the community environment, requires leadership, support and willingness to act. In applying this approach to the guide, it has been designed to be non-specific to any industry sector and usable for small or large organisations (public or private), and engaging for senior executives and the personnel on the ground responsible for its implementation. Therefore, the guide is based on methodology and principles so that it can be applicable in a scalable way to the greatest number of public and private organisations while providing enough detail and ‘how to’ advice to enable organisations to generate their own solutions to road safety issues. It is intended to be applicable to the small enterprise that is concerned about its one or two employees and wanting to ensure that the organisation is doing all it can to mitigate the risks of road use. The guide is also targeted to the other extreme of a multinational organisation undertaking a significant expansion project with thousands of employees and contractors and delivering a massive impact on the local and regional road transport system.

A full copy of the Workplace Safety Guide can be downloaded as a free resource from: Australian Road Safety Partnership Program (www.nrspp.org.au) or New Zealand Fleet Safety Programme (www.fleetsafety.govt.nz).

Image credit: ©Sven Krautwauld/Dollar Photo Club