By Richard Evans, head of business development at Jaama on Grey Fleet Management

Technology is critical to help employers have a cohesive, auditable and systemised approach in place to manage ‘grey fleet’ drivers and their vehicles in addition to managing company cars and their drivers.

Employers should make the same amount of time available to manage ‘grey fleet’ - privately owned vehicles driven on business journeys - as they do company-provided vehicles but too many organisations have a varied approach to the challenge.

Time and resource is needed to manage any organisation’s ‘grey fleet’, but too often, it falls between HR and fleet departments with neither understanding it properly nor wanting to take responsibility.

The end result is that drivers are not managed properly, the correct policies are not implemented and drivers do not provide required information.

Consequently, technology and smartphone apps, which via auto-triggering work in tandem with the vehicle and driver management solution, provide a centralised answer.

Software can offer a number of modules focused on ‘grey fleet’ management including recording vehicle-related information and vehicle and driver documentation.

In addition, it can validate documents and provide a robust audit trail and drivers can use apps to perform vehicle condition checks.

It is important that companies ensure ‘grey fleet’ drivers buy-in to management policies and that those policies are supported by executives.

Ensuring the ‘grey fleet’ driver community is on side, is the challenge. It is really important that driving policies and risk management tools - licence checking and driver profiling - are not just rolled out to the company car community but are promoted across an organisation’s entire employee car use base.

Furthermore, there should be no business journeys unless critical policies are in place, they have been complied with and drivers have signed up to them. Communication must come from the top of a business.

Managers should focus on what technology can do for them and how it can automate and provide efficiencies for organisations.

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