Remote shift predicted for fleet management

The impact of the coronavirus is likely to change fleet management for good.

According to FleetCheck, the remote way of working introduced during lockdown is likely to become permanent, with many companies not planning to return to office or depot-based working.

Peter Golding, managing director, explained: “While the situation remains very fluid, there are many businesses who have learnt, over the last few months, that home working is very viable for some or all of their staff. They recognise the advantages for both employer and employee and have no intention of returning fully to the ‘old’ way of working.

“The exact extent of this is impossible to predict at the moment but even a relatively small shift will have very definite implications for how fleet management is approached generally. It is likely to remain, as it has become in certain weeks, a much more remote activity than in the past.”

He said that, if more people driving company cars and vans were home working, processes would have to change, especially around risk management.

“The fact is that, in the real world, a lot of fleet management happens in an informal manner, especially in small-medium-sized companies. If damage occurs to a vehicle, the fleet manager is likely to notice it on the car park and if a driver is perhaps too ill to drive, you might know purely from the way they look when they are standing in front of you.

“Increased remote working removes these casual interactions to a very large degree. It means a tightening up of your processes to ensure that drivers and vehicles are safe, even if you very rarely see either of those variables in your risk management in the flesh.”

Golding added that there were other implications, such as deciding where vehicles were serviced if workers were geographically spread across a much wider area, and how other essential fleet services were accessed.

Golding concluded: “The impact will differ from fleet to fleet but, in every case, there will be definite implications.”