Whenever we receive a request from a new organisation to introduce Brightmile, it’s an opportunity to further our mission to help companies make work-related driving safer, cheaper and greener, wherever they are in the world. But what about those occasions when the company only wants to include, or start with, drivers who have had an accident or have been identified as being higher risk?
This is a tricky one – we understand why we receive these requests and why it might appear to be a good idea. Some organisations will want to target their youngest drivers or drivers with a history of collecting points or at-fault collisions while, for others, deploying Brightmile in this way can represent the ‘path of least resistance’ for stakeholders seeking the required approvals to roll out our programme.
However, we firmly believe that just targeting a small segment of drivers is the wrong approach and, in the points below, we explain why we will always challenge this attitude. Our goal is to deliver a positive driver-safety programme that encourages and rewards safe business driving for everyone.
Six reasons why Brightmile is for all drivers
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Businesses have a responsibility to ensure that all drivers are safe during business travel. When you drive for work, your vehicle is an extension of your office, and companies should ensure duty-of-care compliance and occupational safety & health best practice for all their employees.
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Collisions and points offer a narrow viewpoint when it comes to understanding driving risk in an organisation. Drivers may have been getting away with a multitude of near misses, while new joiners and contractors represent unknown quantities. Conversely, some drivers may just have been ‘unlucky’. Brightmile offers a holistic safety measure in which we look to diagnose patterns of risky driving and poor performance without waiting for the next incident to occur.
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Punishing incidents is often counter-productive as it can create an incentive for drivers to under-report collisions, creating blind spots and ultimately additional cost and exposure for the company.
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There should be no ‘stigma’ attached to a driver-safety programme. Singling out ‘bad’ drivers and only assigning Brightmile (or any other safe-driving programme) to these employees creates a divisive environment and may serve to alienate your workforce.
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At Brightmile, with our gamification, rewards, mileage expensing and privacy features, we have worked hard to be seen as a benefit for drivers as opposed to a punishment mechanism. We believe that this approach brings the best results in terms of behavioural change. Assigning Brightmile to bad performers would run contrary to this approach, send out the wrong message about driver safety and, ultimately, dilute the impact of the programme.
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Finally, competition is a powerful motivator, and it’s a key component of our gamification approach. Engaging humans to change their behaviour isn’t easy, and we have looked to learn from personal fitness apps like Fitbit and Strava, where competition and social proof help to drive performance. Enrolling the whole fleet in Brightmile leads to maximum results.
Brightmile works best when it becomes an integral part of a positive, inclusive, rewarding, safe-driving culture in an organisation – not a divisive and resented punishment tool.
More than 20 million fatalities and injuries occur each year across the globe as a result of work-related driving, and the reason we exist is to reduce this tragic statistic. Simply put, we want to ensure that all employees, rather than a small subset, get home safely to their loved ones at the end of each day.
