Royal Mail Group receives Prince Michael Fleet Operator Award

Royal Mail’s continued drive to improve road safety has won external recognition from the Prince Michael International Road Safety Awards, which recognise outstanding road safety initiatives in the UK and overseas.

Royal Mail, along with Tesco, has won the 2009 Fleet Safety Award, demonstrating a step-change in focus on road safety. Praise was given to our systems based approach: including our Drivers Manual, Driver Risk Assessment, Telemetry, and risk data integration. Underpinning all these initiatives are communication activities to engage and involve the workforce.

Royal Mail collected the Fleet Operator Award at an official ceremony at London’s Park Lane Hotel hosted by Prince Michael of Kent on December 8 2009.

Prince Michael said: ‘Royal Mail Group has implemented far-reaching occupational road risk management programmes that all other businesses would do well to follow’.

‘It is a tremendous example of what can be achieved in improving the safety of employees and all other road users if organisations at board level have the desire to invest in road safety’.

‘As well as driver safety, reducing the number of crashes involving at work drivers is also proven to save thousands and, in the case of large fleets, millions of pounds and also improves business efficiency and the image of an organisation’.

‘Effective management of those who drive for work is an important element of general management – if it isn’t addressed properly, the negative impact on profit can be very significant’.

‘Royal Mail is real world testimony to the ability to significantly impact costs and reduce on-road incidents and risk exposure generally by putting in place a range of interventions’.

Royal Mail Group is among the almost 40 organisations that have earned ‘business champion’ status under the Government-backed ‘Driving for Better Business’ campaign, which is delivered by RoadSafe, and has agreed to showcase its good practice, to encourage other organisations to adopt sound safe driving management policies.

Melvyn Hodgetts, technical safety manager at Royal Mail, said: ‘The safety of our people is Royal Mail’s number one priority and we have implemented a series of initiatives as part of a safer driving programme that have seen the number of incidents fall by more than a quarter’.

‘With such a large and distinctive fleet, we have a responsibility to make sure we provide a safe environment for our people and the communities in which we operate’.

One of the world’s largest occupational road risk management programmes has been established by Royal Mail Group.

While, road safety has always been a part of Royal Mail’s Group’s duty of care policy it has been given a massive new focus over the last 18 months with more than 50,000 of the organisation’s 90,000 drivers completing risk assessments in possibly the largest programme of its type in the world.

In addition, there has been an investment of more than £10 million to-date in fitting speed limiters and in-vehicle telemetry to the fleet of almost 30,000 iconic red vans that criss-cross the UK collecting and delivering mail.

Across the Group the organisation also runs more than 2,100 light goods vehicles between 6.5 and 7.5 tonnes, 1,500 HGVs and 5,500 company cars and up to 10,000 employees drive their own cars on business trips.

Collectively across Royal Mail Group – the parent company of Royal Mail, Post Office Ltd and Parcelforce Worldwide – there are some 90,000 drivers travelling 605 million miles each year, delivering to 28 million locations in the UK.

As a result of the multi-faceted at-work driving programme, which is being championed at board level, latest data shows that crash costs have been slashed by almost £5.5 million and the incident rate has dropped by more than a quarter.

The award was judged by an independent panel from across the transport and safety sectors.

This success for Royal Mail builds on other external recognition received earlier in the year from both RoPSA and Brake; and coincides with the organisation becoming a ‘Champion’ as part of the government-backed Driving for Better Business program.

The Group’s multi-faceted safe driving strategy embraces drivers, vehicles and journeys as well as the company’s culture and the wider community.