How To Prepare Your Fleet For The ‘New Normal’

With millions of workers heading back into their workplace over the last few weeks, we felt that now is the perfect time to help all fleet managers prepare for the ‘new normal’. Ensuring that your business is fully prepared and ahead of the competition when it comes to taking steps to minimise the impact on normal operations from Coronavirus is essential to your company being able to thrive post pandemic.

 

Read on to find out some of the steps your business should take to ensure your fleet operates as smoothly and as safely as possible following the pandemic.

Educate Drivers On New Best Practice

Educating your drivers on the new best practice in terms of keeping themselves and your customers safe is vital. Here’s just a couple of our top tips on how to ensure your drivers stay safe whilst out on delivery during and after the pandemic:

• Place Emphasis on Social Distancing – Whenever your delivery drivers arrive at their destination, it’s vital that they are completely aware of all social distancing measures they must follow during interactions with customers. Take the time to properly brief them on the latest legislation, which is updated regularly by the government. Encourage safe drop offs, and ensure your drivers stay a suitable distance away from customers at all times.
• Highlight Importance of Washing Hands – We would recommend encouraging your drivers to always wash their hands with warm water and soap before and after their shift. Whilst out making deliveries, you should do your best to provide hand sanitiser to all staff too, and encourage them to use this before and after each delivery is made.
• Ensure Drivers Aren’t Tampering With Products – It’s vital that your drivers do not touch any of the products that they will be delivering until it’s absolutely necessary to do so, especially without any form of protection. Letting your drivers know they should be minimising all contact with customers’ products is, of course, essential and its importance cannot be understated. Each time your driver touches a product they increase the chances of infection spreading to themselves and others.

We can’t place enough emphasis on guaranteeing that your drivers are fully aware of their responsibilities whilst out on deliveries, as anyone found breaking these rules could damage your business’ reputation or even spread the virus further.

Invest In Employee Protection

Whilst it’s vital to ensure your drivers are properly educated on best practice, it’s also important that each of your employees are provided with an adequate and plentiful supply of suitable protection. This means investing in face masks for drivers who will be face to face with customers throughout the day, as well as gloves that are easy to dispose of for your workers.

Even for any of your staff that are based primarily on site or in your offices, they will also need access to these forms of protection as they will likely be working in close proximity to other members of staff. It’s also important that you make every effort to provide all office-based staff with access to hand sanitiser, whilst also having an abundance of antibacterial wipes and hand soap accessible at all times.

Doing your best to reduce the chances of the virus spreading is your duty as a company, so you should do everything you can to reduce the need for interaction between your employees where possible.

Focus On Cutting Costs Where Possible

The ‘new normal’ will take some getting used to and it’s no secret that all businesses across a number of sectors will have to take a full cost-review to identify any areas they can cut costs without impacting on business operations.

The key to cutting costs post pandemic is to ensure that you don’t make any particularly bold moves, as you don’t want to significantly impact on the current efficiency and effectiveness of normal business operations. Whilst it’s fine to cut costs in the short-term for non essential parts of your business, it’s important that you do what you can to keep most of your fleet running completely as normal.

One of the easiest ways to cut costs is by keeping an eye on company fuel consumption, and those with modern fuel management systems already in place will already be able to keep a close eye on their fuel movements and track any problem areas with absolute ease. With fuel currently being at a significantly lower price than normal, now could well be the time to stock up if you have a fuel storage tank on site too!

Want to find out more about how fuel monitoring systems can help your business save a significant sum over the coming years? Get in touch with the team here at Fueltek and we’d be more than happy to help. Simply fill in our online enquiry form or call us direct on 01254 291391 to speak directly to one of our fuel management experts.