Trusting the Employees...
How much do you trust the employees of your company? How much should you trust them? Do you believe your workers are honest enough to never cheat on their mileage logs, or on where they took the company car over the Labor Day weekend?
A representative of a technical solutions company recently told me of a story about a company she was working a trial with. Her client was convinced that GPS technology was possible a good idea to save on fuel costs and may provide a benefit in communicating with drivers, but certainly would not be a significant benefit in scheduling. Her staff were all long term employees and would never steal from her. She also was highly confident in her scheduling department and their ability to operate a very efficient schedule in the highly regulated arena they operated in.
After a trial operation was decided on, initial data was gathered as a baseline for benchmarking the time each driver spend on particular routes and meeting with clients. Before sharing this data with the client company, the rep suggested this manager take a day and do an unannounced ride along with one of her staff members. The manager agreed, only to humor the representative that was trying to show her a point, and made a surprise ride along with one of her courier staff. Amazingly, the route was completed two hours earlier that day than on most.
The friend of mine then went on to point out that even though the company's drivers all had varied routes, and often were diverted to secondary stops and had to change the days plans, the drivers all finished their days work, every day, within minutes of each other. The timing was not circumstantial. Each driver knew how long they could take to complete the days work without being questioned, and they made sure that what they had to do for the day took the entire allotted time.
This company has since begun full implementation of GPS technology and reports fantastic savings. Their fuel spend is down, the total mileage is down, and payroll hours for couriers was reduced by a huge margin with no loss of customer service.
Another case involves a manager from a nonprofit. This manager was on the way to a favorite holiday recreation spot up north when he passed one of the account representatives pulling a boat with the company car. It turns out it was pretty much common knowledge that this was happening on a regular basis. Company car on a company fuel card took the boat up north almost every weekend.
Do you know where your company car was over the holiday weekend?
A representative of a technical solutions company recently told me of a story about a company she was working a trial with. Her client was convinced that GPS technology was possible a good idea to save on fuel costs and may provide a benefit in communicating with drivers, but certainly would not be a significant benefit in scheduling. Her staff were all long term employees and would never steal from her. She also was highly confident in her scheduling department and their ability to operate a very efficient schedule in the highly regulated arena they operated in.
After a trial operation was decided on, initial data was gathered as a baseline for benchmarking the time each driver spend on particular routes and meeting with clients. Before sharing this data with the client company, the rep suggested this manager take a day and do an unannounced ride along with one of her staff members. The manager agreed, only to humor the representative that was trying to show her a point, and made a surprise ride along with one of her courier staff. Amazingly, the route was completed two hours earlier that day than on most.
The friend of mine then went on to point out that even though the company's drivers all had varied routes, and often were diverted to secondary stops and had to change the days plans, the drivers all finished their days work, every day, within minutes of each other. The timing was not circumstantial. Each driver knew how long they could take to complete the days work without being questioned, and they made sure that what they had to do for the day took the entire allotted time.
This company has since begun full implementation of GPS technology and reports fantastic savings. Their fuel spend is down, the total mileage is down, and payroll hours for couriers was reduced by a huge margin with no loss of customer service.
Another case involves a manager from a nonprofit. This manager was on the way to a favorite holiday recreation spot up north when he passed one of the account representatives pulling a boat with the company car. It turns out it was pretty much common knowledge that this was happening on a regular basis. Company car on a company fuel card took the boat up north almost every weekend.
Do you know where your company car was over the holiday weekend?
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