SOFTWARE specialist FleetCheck says that, from a customer survey, large numbers of companies are planning to never completely return to conventional office or depot based working, and this will have an impact on how company vehicles are managed.
Peter Golding, managing director, explained: ‘While the situation remains fluid, there are many businesses who have learnt that home working is 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, but even a relatively small shift will have 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.’
He said that, if more people driving 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 in 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. It means a tightening up of your processes to ensure drivers and vehicles are safe, even if you rarely see either of those variables in your risk management in the flesh.’
Peter added that there were other implications, such as deciding where vehicles were serviced, and how other essential fleet services were accessed, also fleet managers who are themselves working from home needed to be able to access data remotely.
FleetCheck, based in Malmesbury, Wiltshire has a customer base of more than 1,000 businesses totalling in excess of 100,000 vehicles using its fleet software solutions.
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