Fleet management company CLM has been providing driver safety support for security and logistics company Wilson James, in a national health, safety and wellbeing roadshow targeting 500 employees at various locations around the UK.

Last year, Wilson James outsourced the management of its UK fleet to CLM. The company operates across various sectors including construction and aviation where health and safety considerations are imperative.

“We wanted to do more to engage with our staff from a health, safety and wellbeing perspective,” said business performance director, Darren Ward, who has responsibility for the Wilson James fleet.

“We have a workforce of around 2,500 employees in the UK and, as they are scattered in several different locations and mainly based on sites, we decided to go on the road to them, rather than asking them to come to us.”

The result, under the slogan, ‘Time for Safety’, was a national roadshow, starting in Manchester and Aberdeen, then moving to Heathrow and on to central London at three different locations: the Victoria and Albert Museum, St Bartholomew’s Hospital and Fleet Street.

“We wanted to make our staff more aware of the health and safety issues that affect our business,” said Ward.

“At the same time, we wanted to raise awareness of wellbeing issues such as stress and the ‘silent dangers’ like high blood pressure that can affect us all.”

Accordingly, the roadshow focused on health and safety, manual handling, first aid, hazard spotting, occupational health and employee wellbeing, and occupational driving, including driving at work.

The driving stands were aimed at company drivers and those employees who use their own cars on company business or commute to work by car - around 500 employees in total.

“From a driving viewpoint, we wanted to raise awareness of safe driving skills in order to reduce and prevent accidents from happening.  We also wanted to get across the frequency and type of accidents we have, the places they occur and what we are doing to try and combat them in terms of risk assessments and driving training.

“We are keen for our people to understand they need to take responsibility over how they drive, and that accidents affect our business performance in terms of repairs, claims, time off the road, replacement vehicles and increased premiums.”

CLM provided a driving safely exhibition stand which looked at key aspects of at-work driving and risk assessment.

This included key driver safety topics such as driving under the influence of drink and drugs, driving for work, vehicle safety checks and inspections, and windscreen repair, including smart repair.

One of CLM’s preferred tyre suppliers, Michelin, was also invited to participate in a tyre safety workshop, to coincide with tyre safety month. This explained tyre pressures, tread depths and other tyre-related issues and looked at the benefits of keeping tyres correctly inflated.

CLM also asked its preferred driver training partner, AA DriveTech, to hold a driver safety workshop at the Heathrow roadshow, where half the Wilson James’ fleet is based.

This comprised six 30-minute sessions looking at key driver safety topics, including hazard awareness, speed awareness, winter and wet weather driving techniques, driver fatigue, mobile phone use on the move and parking and manoeuvring.

“We were delighted to be able to support Wilson James in what we thought was a very laudable and worthwhile project,” said Simon Cotton, general manager at CLM.

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