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07/06/07 Fleet News - What matters in fleet?
This month two issues appear to dominate – the forthcoming English smoking ban and the battle to reduce fleets’ impact on the environment
The smoking ban
by Phill Tromans
When, on July 1, England bans smoking in public places and workplaces – including company vehicles – it will mark the fourth and final nail in the coffin for smoking at work in the UK.
While fans of clean air will rejoice, fleets are facing headaches galore as they struggle to adjust in time.
According to Tony Leigh, company secretary for fleet operators’ association ACFO, three is still considerable confusion.
He said: “Should smoking be banned in employees’ own cars when they are on work trip?
“There still seems to be a fog around it, we still don’t know. The big sticking point in the legislation is where it says ‘primarily used for business purposes’ – what does primarily actually mean?”
Fleet News award winner Nick Purkis, fleet risk manager for removal firm Pickfords, says: “The smoking ban is the biggest issue facing fleets at the moment – mainly how we’re going to police it. It’s been a problem in Scotland and it will be in England too.
“Once drivers go off site they are on their own.
“The only thing we can do is check for ash but if they smoke out of the window it’s going to be difficult. It’s been company policy not to smoke anyway, but we really have to step up a gear now, we don’t want to get caught.”
Another Fleet News award winner, Michelle Hallam of Fisher Scientific, says the smoking ban is her main problem.
“We already have a no-smoking policy but I don’t know if people will be very happy about having no-smoking stickers in their cars,” she says.
“We’re trying to work out where to position them. The vehicles are used for personal use so I’m a bit apprehensive about how it’s going to go down. The rules say it should be in every passenger compartment so that would in the back as well as the front.”
Helen Bolton, fleet manager for Ceuta Healthcare, is finding it all very confusing.
“I’m putting a policy together at the moment and that’s my main priority,” she says.
“Some of our drivers only have a passenger with them once every six months but even then it has to be no smoking at any time. It’s a major concern of mine at the moment what I’m going to put in the policy and how to tell the drivers of both the company car and employee-owned cars.”
Telling the drivers is also the big worry for Alison Harding, BBT Thermotechnology’s fleet administrator.
“Communicating the smoking ban out to the drivers hasn’t been simple,” she says.
“We have a lot of service engineers that won’t go near email or electronic communications and we’ve had a few people that have been a bit grumpy about it.
“Mostly it’s been the non-smokers that aren’t happy about ‘defacing’ their vans with no-smoking stickers and the senior management don’t like the idea of putting a sticker in their company cars.”
NICK BROWN chief executive, FMG Support
The big issues – environment, safety and taxation – will continue to dominate headlines, but customer service is where the focus must be. As fleet continues to be become more of a boardroom issue, the pressure is on clearly demonstrating the tangible link between fleet performance and business performance improvement. There has been a lot of talk on the value of fleet, but customers now need to see the evidence.
Service standards have to improve across the industry. Central to delivering this is continuing to develop and implement regulation such as the Kitemark initiative that promotes best practice, improves standards and customer service. The reputation of the fleet industry depends on it.
