How do you get your board to fund fleet risk? Martin Evans, board member of the Association of Fleet Professionals, tells all.

Martin Evans, board member of the Association of Fleet Professionals

It’s never easy to convince a business to spend their tightly guarded money on intangibles. It’s a thought that must cross the minds of many fleet managers during budgeting season as they put new risk management initiatives forward, competing with peers in their corporate group trying to obtain budgetary approval for their own proposals.

The core problem is that in arguing for accident prevention measures, you find yourself trying to quantify an intangible in cost and human terms in order to stop it from happening. It’s a tough sell, whether you look at low-level incidents that are probably perceived as little more than annoying, or more significant ones that have a serious financial and emotional impact.

Your board may support, in concept, the idea of fitting dashcams or carrying out driver training assessments – and may even accept that such moves will reduce accidents. But those measures are unlikely to feed through into something quantifiable – such as a reduced insurance premium – for a couple of years or longer, while the human cost of a crash that didn’t happen is never really visible. The temptation will be for them to focus their attention on simpler projects with more measurable, faster paybacks.

So, as the fleet manager, how do you get yourself heard and obtain budget approval? From the Association of Fleet Professionals’ risk and compliance group, here is our five-point guide.

1) Do your homework

Make sure you have a handle on how to get board backing for a project within your organisation. Talk to people who have won investment in the past and learn about how they did it. Explain to them what you are trying to achieve and get advice on which key considerations could help to swing arguments at board level. Successful strategies will differ quite widely from employer to employer and knowing how the process operates within yours will be crucial.

2) Get influential advocates

It’s easier to get approval with backing from board members who will champion your cause – and remember that it doesn’t really matter if they present the initiative as their own idea as long as it gets rubber stamped. It’s also important to identify other influential figures within your organisation at all levels, tell them about what you are trying to achieve and that you’d like them to be part of your unofficial campaign.

3) Emphasise the HR angle

Getting your human resources department involved is likely to be a good strategic move. Outside of the fleet department, accidents cause disruption for all kinds of functions within your company. But HR people are potentially the most affected because they deal with the human cost, such as the range of issues surrounding long-term absenteeism. Convincing them that accident rates can be reduced is likely to be a positive.

4) Remember ethical responsibilities

If you’re in an organisation where you are looking at adopting new risk management measures, chances are that you are already fulfilling all your legally mandated Driving for Work responsibilities. While seeing actual costs fall should be at the centre of your argument, don’t be afraid to make the ethical case. Doing as much as possible to protect your employees and other road users is simply the right the thing to do.

5) Get help from potential suppliers

Investments of this type take time to pay back. Talk to prospective suppliers of the risk management products that you are considering and your insurer, too, gathering credible data to build a picture for the next 3-5 years and showing the kind of accident reductions that can be expected alongside the likely effects on premiums.