 Hello and welcome to the National Road Safety Partnership Program's thought leadership panel session exploring how organisations from different sectors safely manage their grey fleet. What is grey fleet, you may ask? Why does it concern to organisations? And what is the National Road Safety Partnership Program? This event is sponsored by Safe Work Australia as part of Safe Work Month. Before I touch on those questions, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Dr Darren Wishart and I help deliver along with Jerome Cars Lake, the National Road Safety Partnership Program, or commonly known as NRSPP, proudly managed by ARB. NRSPP is an industry-led initiative which aims to assist Australian businesses and organisations to not only improve the safety of their workers, but also help reduce the nation's road safety trauma through unity and collaboration. NRSPP is funded by the major states and NHVR. Joining me today is an incredibly diverse and experienced panel including Associate Professor Tania Lehmann, Dean of Law at Flinders University, Rachel Gunn, Health Safety and Well-Being Systems Manager at Commonwealth Bank, Richard Shuster, Group Manager, Procurement, Fleet and Sustainability at Church of Christ Queensland, Lonnie Toya, National Health Safety and Environment Manager at Santa Fe, and Shane Stockle, Manager, Manufacturing, Transport and Logistics, Workplace, Health and Safety Queensland. Our topic today being explored with this panel of experts is Gray Fleet, which is defined as the proportion of work vehicles used for work purposes owned by the driver or another entity rather than being directly provided by the organisation employing that driver. Gray Fleet for organisations is often out of sight and out of mind. As a result, the NRSPP Steering Committee partners identified it as a major risk with unique challenges. Over the last two years, NRSPP has collaboratively developed a guide to assist organisations in managing their Gray Fleet safety risk and a research paper exploring the legal implications by Tania Lehmann. The collaboration involved 25 partners, three are here joining us today. So now I'd like to ask each of the panellists to provide a bit more of an outline as to why Gray Fleet is a concern or relevant to them. Rachel? Thanks, Darren. So, Rachel Gunn from the Commonwealth Bank. At the banks, health and safety of our people is important to us, regardless of the activity. So when work driving was identified as a key risk, we needed to ensure that we had all the systems and processes in place to ensure the safety of our people, regardless of whether it was driving a business case motor vehicle, which is a tool of the trade vehicle, or having been identified as using a personal vehicle for work purposes through the mileage claim or expense claim process. Our strategy also extends to the community. So ensuring these programs are in place, we also then ensure that the people, the community, are safer on the roads. We aim at the bank to ensure that we, our people, come to go home from work in the same condition that they came. So making sure we support them in that activity is key for us. Richard Shuster. Hi, everybody. Richard Shuster, I look after fleet and procurement at Churches of Christ in Queensland. At Church of Christ in Queensland is a large not-for-profit. It's one of the top 10 in Australia. It has a very large fleet, about 630 vehicles, and a very diverse operation that covers a lot of areas. We do probably about nearly 11 million kilometres a year, about 14 times to the moon and back, and that's a lot of exposure. So grey fleet and fleet issues are very important to us, particularly since caring for the community is the real reason why our not-for-profit exists. So we just need our caring staff to be very caring on our roads. Thanks. Lonnie. So Lonnie Toyer, National Health and Safety Manager for Sonofi. We are a pharmaceutical company. We sell vitamins, mineral supplements, pharmaceutical drugs, where they're to save lives. And so for us, the idea of having an employee pass away as a result of driving is just not within our scope of thought. And so for us, it forms a critical part of our business. So to have a program that protects our workers in their car, regardless of whether it's our car or their car, is a fundamental to our business. Tonya. I'm a former legal practitioner who had personal injury practice and particularly motor vehicle accident injury practice. And for many years I've been a legal academic teaching tort law. So looking at civil liability for organisations, I also work in researching in other areas around transport. And so I'm particularly interested in bringing all of these issues together. Anne Shane. Workplace Health and Safety Queensland is one of the seven regulators that form Houser. So if we started that level, this is a national strategy to try and improve health and safety outcomes. Obviously, work-related driving is one of those key activities that cause injury. So we're looking at opportunities before the end of the strategy in 2022 to get further traction on improving risk and those outcomes. And this is one of the areas we can work in. Great. Thank you. So I'd now like to ask Tonya to provide some insights regarding legal perspectives. Why it matters, what have you found in your research and should organisations actually care about gravely? Well before I start, I just want to make it very clear that I'm not giving any specific legal advice that my comments are in the nature of just a general discussion. So there are a number of legal implications that can arise in the context of thinking about grey fleet. It's not a term that's included in any Australian legislation or in case law, but it might arise in relation to work health and safety issues. The vehicle is a workplace, workers' compensation issues, particularly in the context of employment-related journeys. Motor vehicle accident claims and CTP schemes and whether they apply or not and how they might intersect with workers' compensation schemes. Licensing for drivers and do organisations know what licence or licence conditions apply to their drivers? Criminal and civil liability potentially and of course the heavy vehicle national law chain of responsibility. And there are increasingly emerging issues around the collection of data, privacy and who can access that data and for what purposes. So let us consider now where fatalities and serious injuries are occurring in the workplace. We've got some information. 76 workers or 42% in 2016 died as a result of vehicle collisions. The next sort of mechanism of injury in terms of fatalities in the workplace was 25 workers or 14% falling from height. So there's a big difference in terms of the statistics of how many people die with regards to motor vehicles and crashes. Shane, what are your thoughts from a regulator perspective on those sort of statistics? Sure. Darren, when looking at those figures, the first thing I'd say is they're all industry figures. So if we think about the spread of those fatalities across different industries, falls from heights generally occur within construction or related industries. Those vehicle collisions happen across all industries, but there would be a cluster also around road transport or in the transport industry. If we look at the regulators, we're structured around the priority industries and of course construction and transport to the priority industries. So we'd be doing a lot of work in that space. The other thing I'd say here is that it depends on whether or not all the injuries are being notified to the regulator and that then they're actually investigated as a result of that. Enforcement happens either through proactive campaigns where we focus on the mechanisms of injury and we'd be doing a lot of work there and that would flow out of that as well as those ones that are notified where we can actually take action because we know there's an issue. So given that the vehicle is a workplace and that includes light vehicles and as you sort of highlighted, there's an obligation to report an incident but potentially that's not occurring. So what in terms of a regulator are you doing in the future to start making that happen so that we can address those issues? Well, I should say we're doing things now. So one of the key drivers for this is working with ostriches around our vehicles as a workplace guide. That guide will provide some specific practical information to organisations about the notification requirement about what they must do in this space when people are at risk of injury or death because they're driving for work-related purposes. We've always had the provisions in the general sense but this makes it specific to organisations that they need to do something. The guide is about to be endorsed. We will then be able to communicate that more specifically across industries. The second thing we're doing is there's a couple of working groups through Hauser to actually target particular areas of concern about responding to on-road fatalities. This is one of those areas where across the jurisdictions what we could be doing is actually pooling resources and sharing information to come up with a more consistent approach. Can I make a comment there, Darren? I think it is important right at the beginning to acknowledge that all of the jurisdictions in Australia potentially have different legislative provisions. So it's important for us to remember here but before we go further in our discussion we're dealing with a patchwork of regulation and that what's happening in Queensland might be different to what's happening in South Australia or New South Wales and so we need to bear that in mind. So I'll ask the panellists around the table. Given that the regulator's highlighted and Tonya's highlighted the legislation, the vehicles that work place and incidents that occur in a workplace and in this case it's fatalities in a vehicle that's used for work that's around the table. Are you aware that you are meant to report that? It's a reportable incident like any other incident like falling off ladders, etc. So what happens in that space? I suppose that for me it's not something that we'd really considered before. We've been talking about this this morning before we started and that understanding of that we've met the threshold for that it's not something that we would recognise it's a big accident and separating that workplace and home life type perspective and absolutely it's a workplace we recognise that we control that but to report on that is not something that we've probably considered having said that we probably haven't met the threshold for a lot of that and so that's another factor. So typically in the industrial sense we know someone's gone to hospital we know they're getting stitches we know they're going to be an inpatient that's fairly clear and cut decision we're reporting straight away or even we probably overreport in many cases we report early because we want to be seen doing the right thing we also want control of the incident investigation and there's all other processes around management of safety but in that vehicle sense we have lost we lose that control because it's in the hands of the police or other authorities and it's not right there. So reporting I probably would say that we haven't considered it. And further to that educating our people that even though they're in their personal vehicle they're still doing activities for work purposes therefore it falls in the reporting process. They don't just think well it's my car and I was going to a meeting so I'm not going to worry about reporting that. So it's ensuring that we get the education out there that what they are doing under the direction of the organisation whilst in their personal equipment is still at work or a workplace. Certainly for us if there is a client resident in that vehicle there are very clear reporting requirements for us with government funding for our provision of services we do need to report those but general ones that Lonnie was referring to they wouldn't be reported being on the people side. Okay so to each of the industry panellists also then you've sort of part answered it but how does your organisation approach safety and how does that then relate to the grey fleet across the issue? Safety is very important for churches of Christ in Queensland and we would like to think that grey fleet and the standard fleet are treated the same but there is a differential treatment in the two it's not called grey fleet for without reason getting exposure getting people to recognise that it's important for safety as well just as important that is an avenue that we're working on so we are working very hard to put it bluntly we don't have a great track record in the driving safety side we had a large number of infringements and quite a large number of crashes last year we're working actively to improve that driving safety culture we're doing all of the low hanging fruit things like we are buying cars that are as safe as we can buy that part is easy, a good fleet manager will do that but it's that driver behaviour that accounts for 94% of crashes that's when we're investing our time to really educate our drivers and we'll explore as we go on how difficult that is in a grey fleet driver's sense but as an organisation very focused on safety rolling that down into the grey fleet area is the challenge getting that scene and getting that cut Rachel? Yes so as some time ago when driving was identified as one of our key risks in our risk portfolio we took a closer look at the policy and it was very quickly identified that there was policy in place for the business case motor vehicle but not a lot if anything that extended out to the grey fleet so our approach to that was to get an external agency to look at us and do a critical risk review that was approximately 18 months ago from that came 59 actions we took all of those actions and put them into place we then formed an end-to-end work driving program which 18 months later we had Dr Darren Wishart come in and do a, we actually had a program to review so Darren did an end-to-end work driving program of that we have new activities that we need to work to the aim for us which I find slightly challenging is to identify the legislative requirements then work to what the corporate expectations are around the advice but then in addition to that providing a program that our people can apply so having at the moment as it stands having a very hard fast and cap 5 star rated regular servicing maintenance routine inspection in place isn't going to be easily transferred then on to our grade fleet and as a conversation I had with Darren yesterday then in addition to that when an if case law happens what the law sees is reasonable for the business to do so we'll continue to have reviews, work with industry peers work with the national road safety partnership program to look at what's out there and another key factor is speaking to the people what is reasonable for them to receive or weakens ok and how can then they apply it so it's consultation with a whole range of people and listening to either one engineer it out the risk or build it into processes that people don't even know that they're acting in a safe manner it's just part of your day Darren can I just note that our three industry representatives here all come from large entities and those large entities will have good structures in place around identifying risk managing risk, developing policies I think the issue around grade fleet is that many of these vehicles and the use of these vehicles is in industries or organisations that are small to medium enterprises and often at the very small end where there aren't clear risk management structures where there aren't clear policies where there might just be a couple of people involved to deliver people late at night and those raise very interesting issues as well so it's great that the top end of town is really starting to engage with this but there's a much bigger tail where these issues I don't think are even on the table yet Tony you're absolutely correct I presented a conference earlier this year an aged care conference on grade fleet I should say and at that conference the number of people who came up to me after not all aged care facilities are big you know they've had one community run facility and just a few cars in that one they said I'd never heard of grade fleet and they said and on the second day of the conference after I presented a number of them came and said I actually didn't sleep very well last night thank you for making me aware of that so that is a good point and of course not only employees but volunteers for not-for-profit organisations would be collected in this space there's actually another tier that scares me as well and that's we have the private use of a staff member's vehicle we then layer that to moving taking somebody a client or a resident in that staff member's vehicle and then the next layer where our staff member drives a client's vehicle which we do on a number of occasions and we have a process around that but we have you talk about where you can put control and we have controls we're working on safety for our fleet drivers and we can ask them to do an online driver course we can make that happen what do you do with that person who's driving their own vehicle for work purposes how do you make them do that moving across in that divide that's proving challenging for us and there's a big challenge there between the difference between what we've referred to as a company fleet and Rachel you mentioned before about you know in a traditional fleet you've got company policies you can have a five star supplied and cap rated vehicle and then Richard in your case there you've got people using private their own vehicles or a client's vehicle I'm guessing you can't determine that that's necessarily a five star and cap rated vehicle I can guarantee that it's not in fact we did a in partnership with NRSPP and University of Melbourne and we put telematics devices in gray fleet vehicles and I believe it's a groundbreaking one that the Melbourne Union NRSPP are saying it highlighted to us some key concerns about gray fleet one a lot of the cars were too old to put the telematics device in they were more than ten years old and we didn't we didn't expect that luckily we got 43 out of 50 people doing that and what we did find as a result of that was our cars were significantly gray fleet vehicles were significantly older those vehicles also travelled significantly more than other vehicles in the trial so our people were using the cars a lot more and we got a driver's score we don't know which driver A from B but for the 10,000 plus drivers and 100 million kilometres that were actually assessed and what we were benchmarked against their driving score was about 68% and we were about 64% so we can see straight away that we're not quite at the average for drivers so we're driving further we're not quite as good and we're driving older cars so we're concerned for gray fleet can I pick up on that just in terms of the use of telematics because obviously when we're focusing in the road transport industry it's almost become the culture that's what we do and through that they've been able to manage risk better by providing that feedback loop to drivers about the speeds that they drive at the way that they drive are their heavy braking forces things like that which again can be used to shape driver behaviour so it seems to me that it's a good opportunity in terms of being able to think about that for gray fleet how we're going to improve the health and safety standards going forward if that makes sense the use of telematics though raises really interesting privacy questions when we're thinking about the use of gray fleet should we be tracking where someone goes in their private car who has access to that data how secure is that data what else can that data be used for and do the gray fleet drivers know the extent of the data that's being collected about their travel habits or their driving habits out of our 50 I did know that 43 did the trial so 7 people several did put it in and several then pulled it out I'm pretty happy actually the 43 out of 50 for the trial did you do a check on how often they'd maintained their car or whether the services were full services or when they last checked their tyre pressure not for the purposes of that and so those are all extra things on thinking about the safety of those vehicles yeah what does concern me with that age one is I think I read 21% of the fleet, Australia's national fleet is more than 16 years old so fifth is more than 16 years old out there they're going to end up in your gray fleet if you don't have a policy or you don't have something that tries to prevent that from happening in the not-for-profit sense it's again hard because we want our volunteers we have 1500 volunteers in our organization getting volunteers is harder and harder and then telling a volunteer well your car doesn't meet our standard you can't use it do we then reduce the gene pool of volunteers so what I find in the not-for-profit sense is a competing tension between the resources we want people to use their car to help us out but on the other end we're putting restrictions around that for a very good reason I understand so there's a hard act to follow balancing that obligation for the whole driving safety component but how do you tell a volunteer that there's problems because you'll just lose volunteers that has huge implications for a not-for-profit for drivers you can mandate for the volunteers they just don't turn up I think the reality for everyone though is that we're all competing for people and the more restrictions we put on our motor vehicle the less we have people wanting to come and join our business so for us what's the best way to fight for the best labour we really try and have a whole and encompassing process that really achieves that better and certainly in terms of volunteer space that would be a great difficulty but for us we're on the other end of the spectrum saying well how diverse can we make our fleet but also making it safe to be able to attract more people so whether we're trying to retain them at your end or retain them at our end there still is that competing against other employers and saying well how open and liberal are you with your motor vehicle policy I think for us the ANCAP ratings is an absolute must we've even gone to the facts to the level of 7 years maximum time period for your vehicle because what was 7 years ago standard is very very different to what is standard ANCAP rating now we're even looking at saying well where's that going in 2 years time with ANCAP ratings lane keeping assist and other automatic braking all these other features are saying well do we bring that into our policy and say in 2 years time that's going to be mandatory for all new vehicles and that's not just for our own fleet vehicles but it's equally for the grey fleet vehicles so we're quite being a big business we're quite fortunate to be able to stipulate just exactly what cars we can have underneath that grey fleet policy so we are in a bit more fortunate situation in that situation for our business even in an organisation without the volunteer side there's this move away from our own fleet to packaging and providing providing a car allowance because then you just reduce your fleet problem goes away and so there's another competing tension let's move the fleet out we don't need to worry about it then it's not on our books just give them a car allowance and we're covered but unfortunately no as we're well aware we can't do that that just shifts the responsibility the responsibility stays there but the fleet's just moved with less control which goes to the design of work your redesigning work in a way that meets the requirements of the organisation I guess financially profitability etc but you can't design out the obligation the obligation extends I think Tanny's work about what are the common things that all organisations not just the larger ones represented here should be focusing on to try and manage this risk just to make sure that we're talking to all the organisations who might use grey fleet not just the larger ones and this discussion around the nature of the vehicles also raises for me issues around equity particularly in an era where those at the other end are often working in very low paid jobs required to use their vehicles to access their work or to travel between different work sites and requiring those workers to have vehicles that meet particular safety benchmarks might put them out of the market all together because the income that they're earning is that they have to make financial decisions about where they spend their money they buy a cheap car, they buy an old car they're using their car because they have to, they don't have access to a leasing program through their employment they might be casually employed they might be piece work employed and so they are using their vehicle for work there's no control over it they can't afford to have a good vehicle, a safe vehicle and no one's checking up on whether they've even maintained properly or not but if we do check up enforcing something that they can't meet for new tyres so it's finding that balance of what we expect and need and what they can or are able to comply with or do, it's tough it is and so from a regular perspective if we've got these challenges and as Richard's identified organisations probably moving towards more of the grey fleet compared to the traditional fleet we certainly need to be careful because those statistics of fatalities in a work vehicle could potentially go up if we don't have the same management capacity in that way so I guess some of it is around future work and maybe future enforcement in this space because I think that sends the message to organisations about the importance of these organisations they have never been touched by an issue where they need to realise that this covers them I think you were saying earlier that you'd had a couple of incidents and maybe they are drivers for organisations to bring about change I guess from the regular perspective having the Austroids Guide being able to communicate the importance of this and programs such as this today trying to engage organisations in the discussion so that we change the culture about it's very simple, we drive vehicles it's a workplace when we are looking at a lot of the other industries the culture is just it's not and I think that's what we were hearing earlier and what does this mean to as we see the rise of the gig economy where people are going from piece work to piece work to piece work using their vehicle to facilitate all of that what is the organisation there, is it the air tasker is it what other platform that's providing those jobs and so the whole nature when you are talking about the future of work this really is going to be an issue going forward You mentioned earlier that it sounded like you were trying to in your organisation get a bit more synergy between some of the things that you do in your traditional fleet and applying that to the grey fleet and you mentioned the vehicle and the age of the vehicle so over the last couple of years what sort of things have you tried to achieve in that grey fleet space I've been doing safety for 20 years and I've only been doing road safety for the last four and I've been quite fortunate that I've come into it later in life and so we look at exactly the same things we would for normal business so do we have the right equipment so vehicles and that's where we have that motor vehicle policy and cap rating, we then have other pieces there as well and fuel efficiency metrics do we have the right system so are we training our people the right way are they rock got the right skills, do they have a valid driver's licence and it's amazing when you do the checks just how many people have either expired we recently had a gentleman who moved from one state to another wasn't aware that he had a certain time period to change over his licence and we got onto it really quickly and we stopped him driving straight away and made sure he got his licence attended to and there's simple checks that every day mistakes but in the work context that just wouldn't be deemed acceptable so we have those systems approach in place as well but then we also look at that vehicle maintenance piece is absolutely key so regardless of whether it's grey fleet or whether it's our standard fleet we really make sure that are they inspecting their vehicle every month do we provide them with allowance for grey fleet for basically all the regular drivers in grey fleet I'm not talking about the mileage allowance people we provide them with an allowance that's suitable enough to maintain their vehicles so yeah they may have the excuse that oh can I afford the four tyres this month well if they've managed their finances well we've paid them the allowance for that they should have that available and ready to go now they may choose to novate it it makes it much easier optioned for maintenance that have used the cash as they would for their normal vehicle but we have really strict controls around that saying here's your car have you inspected it have you maintained it the inspection piece then also plays on the behaviour side so I liken it to a sales person will go to the customer to keep their product front of mind for me that inspection program is just exactly the same we're putting a safety element in mind for the driver to regularly engage in that process they could have physically do something with their hands with their mind within road safety and I would hope that that translates across to their driving behaviour that's written in your policy you've got grey feet embedded in the company we make no difference between the two in terms of our expectations for maintenance, inspections driver behaviour, driver licensing and then we have a separate piece on driver safety and that mandates our piece around training so every five years they've got to do a practical course and every six months they've got to do an online module to help keep their skills knowledge and more importantly their awareness so hopefully with their time behind the wheel they can purchase their own safety by driving safely and it is taking that management systems approach that I've used for 20 years within health and safety bringing it across to fleet and saying okay why can't it work it's certainly driven down injury rates, certainly driven down fatality rates across broader business and absolutely we're starting to see those vehicle accident rates come down particularly the fault vehicle accident rates Rachel in terms of grey fleet in the last couple of years where have you progressed so we implemented the program an actual end to end work driving program there's still a lot of work to do in the area just to give you an idea of size so we have 38,000 people domestically 2,000 have been identified as having a business case motor vehicle and then in addition to that another 2,000 have been identified as driving grey fleet so at the moment we make sure that the same as we make sure that people are trained and licensed making sure that the training is appropriate we run an annual driver attestation program with relation to the company cars they're always issued and set at a minimum standard which is the ANCAP 5 etc but for us at the moment it's just getting that understanding of extending it sounds like you've got it extending it to grey fleet but finding that happy balance to having it something that the staff can use and apply Richard in the last couple of years I think my job here might be to encourage those who aren't as far we're on the journey and we are at the stage we're past awareness the idea of risk and this needing attention is recognised by our senior management and our CEO down have got behind this so I think that's important what we've had to do is get a handle on how many kilometres our vehicles were doing and we've got we're sitting at about 630,000 at the moment that we know grey fleet kilometres sadly that's about a 38% increase on last year now you think you're doing a very good job of reducing your grey fleet well one we don't have to reduce it you have to manage it two the nature of our organisation particularly community care is growing as community care business grows a lot of a lot of the kilometres, the private kilometres are being done in community care and so that's sort of a focus for us it would probably be nearly 90% of our grey fleet kilometres they're the ones we know about we probably don't know about that other 2,000 yet we're working on that so now that we have that support and that awareness of how much exposure we have to the grey fleet we're rolling out those initiatives similar to what both Lonnie and Rachel you have done already what I expect to have seen happen in the fleet area in our fleet vehicles hopefully we'll transition to the grey fleet ones as well on our volunteer fleet we won't be able to be as prescriptive as you have and I'm not sure how we would mandate them to do an online course so that's going to be a challenge right so it's an interesting piece we've got a broader road safety commitment within our business now because we recognise that in Australia and New Zealand we spend so much time out on our own while we do such a beautiful country we drive for our holidays typically so we're actually starting to think even more broadly and offer online training for our non-driving stuff that's going to provide that next step to capture those that aren't necessarily caught with our standard programs that only drive a really small amount but it also helps with our culture particularly when it's being led from our senior managers who want this to come in supporting it to come in to help change that mindset of it's just about work well it's not we need our people to turn up to work every day we need our volunteers to turn up in your case to turn up to help with your services that you provide because without them we fall apart so there is a trying to change that mindset of it's just about work we're now starting to think that a little bit next step further and maybe that's another opportunity so well how do we do that we don't just offer it to drivers we offer it to everyone of course there's a dollar cost opportunity that comes with that and how do we manage that Darren one thing that we have managed is to augment our fleet management system to incorporate the grey fleet vehicle so it's going to be a tiered a two level approach we won't have we won't capture all of the data that we have for our fleet vehicles for the grey fleet vehicles what we will capture is that they're registered that they've been serviced they're insurance and those will be loaded on and the system will prompt us to make sure that those are current so that getting us systematising it is a key step for us we're just about to release that module in our fleet system now certainly in talking with people about grey fleet and certainly talking with the insurance sector there's an area that's a little bit concerned about grey fleet in that often times people will use their private vehicles for the work which is their grey fleet and the insurance box is ticket whether it's used for work or whether it's not and there's a different cost involved in either insurance policy so potentially some people would just take it as a private vehicle and then maybe down the track it's discovered it's not it has some can I just speak to that I think a lot of workers who are using their vehicle for what technically would be a work purpose don't regard that as being a work purpose so dropping off the mail on the way home or they're going to the bank or they're making a delivery to a client on the way to something else or they're in a car having a work conversation on their mobile phone so when does the work journey become the work journey indeed indeed and of course there is a different legislative framework in every jurisdiction across Australia and so just because something is regarded as a work-related journey in one place doesn't necessarily mean that it will be in another then the addition to that is the insurance companies themselves you can have a sales rep and it's commercial use for one company and you go to another company and that same sales rep activity is not considered commercial use and you go well if we're as a business saying we need you to have it for commercial use and then the insurance company says you don't need it our employees get confused and that's for a tightly controlled business like ours and again I do feel for the other organisations that don't have that level of control so there's a lot of challenges involved in the managing of the safety of Greyfleet I'd like to pose a scenario to you now what about this case where you've got a Greyfleet, a workers vehicle and it's involved in a crash and that's what the company deploys but as we know in recent times there's been a Takata airbag recall and you find that the organisation and the driver haven't done a lot about it it's a Greyfleet vehicle how do you enforce the driver to replace the airbag hasn't been done, how have you checked it but what you find is that the people in the vehicle have been injured as a result of a Takata airbag in a Greyfleet vehicle what does that mean the legal implications potential it hasn't been conveyed yet but Tanya I'd like to throw to you as a first point what were your thoughts on that look it's a really tricky question because there are so many variables there so was there some sort of workplace policy that managed Greyfleet or was there not what sort of journey was this is this the journey that would come in the workers' compensation legislation so it might be covered in that context is it something that the employer or the organisation should have known about did they have sufficient control to know about that vehicle are we talking about injury just to the people in the vehicle because of the way the airbag deployed are we talking about injury to people outside the vehicle so does it come within the CTP scheme or is there a conflict between workers' compensation eligibility and CTP eligibility and for me this creates opportunities for creative lawyers to think well if we can't get this as a workers' compensation matter if we can't make a report under work health and safety if we can't access CTP claims how else are we going to deal with this and I think then for me questions around what's reasonable for the entity to know have become really important what could they foresee and I'm talking more in a common law space here how are they expected to foresee that what information might they have imputed to them by the law that would allow them to foresee particular risks and then how do they manage those risks if they've really got very little control over them so if we're talking about a workers' vehicle or a volunteers' vehicle or someone who comes from that very broad definition of worker for the workers' and safety acts purposes who has a vehicle who may or may not have made particular financial decisions about how they respond to that vehicle or a vehicle who could not take the vehicle back to the dealership to get the airbag changed because they had certain pressing personal circumstances how does all that fit into the mix and so I think there are so many elements when we think about something like that are we expecting that every organisation will keep a regular check on vehicle recalls so there was a vehicle recall that I was aware of just on the news last night now does every organisation have a means for checking every vehicle recall that's been issued do they then for their fleet vehicles for their fleet vehicles but if we're talking about older vehicles if we're talking about private vehicles are they keeping up to date with the recalls are they then asking all their employees or workers or volunteers do you drive one of these vehicles have you done this if we're expecting you to be able to use your vehicle for work are we going to give you another vehicle so that you can send your vehicle off to get the recall work that's necessary done what goes to the system of work I think what you're saying what is the extent of grey fleet to the ordinary fleet within the organisation have you done take an action around recall for that ordinary fleet wouldn't you as a matter of course be engaging those who are driving grey fleet in that same information how often are they driving is it just a one of in this case or is it part of that ongoing regular requirement so those are the matters that we would be considering whether or not we're notified of it or not because often we get contacted by organisations post event to go look at the issue of course because it does support a common law claim so there are other these are the types of things that I guess as a regulator would be asking or experiencing and trying to get some clarity in that separate sense and how do you overcome the public lethargy about taking their car in to get a fix when they get a letter because this could kill you need to take this in and get it done and the dealerships are having trouble getting the people to take those cars in that worries me so what do you do to the industry here what are you doing that's been an incident that's been highlighted what processes are you educating are you just continuously conveying to your grey fleet people that are they aware of this Takata Rebag issue as an example or any other recall you've got processes in place that's occurring for our standard fleet vehicle yes for our grey fleet vehicle we are wholly and solely reliant on the fact that we asked for records of when they got their last maintenance stuff yeah but my sales reps are probably now wincing that I've got a huge question on the vehicle inspection around Takata Richard exactly the same as Lonnie here fleet vehicles we are all over those like green on grass they are covered but the others we rely on them to be doing their service and hopefully overcoming that lethargic I don't care about this recall issue one other concern that I do have is fittings generally for vehicles so going beyond the Takata one what about cargo barriers someone has a full drive or a large SUV and they want to use that for work purposes but have that packaged all of our cars have a cargo barrier in them we are required what about the grey fleet vehicle it should have and if it is a packaged novated lease one then generally it would but what about the person the car on an ad hoc basis loads it heavily in the back because they are driving out to St George to visit a facility and everybody asks everybody in our organization to take things out to somewhere what if they don't have those fittings that's a concern let's go to the broader usability of the vehicle is it fit for the purpose you are asking people to do so it's about the barriers and understand why you have it in your industry but it might also be about manual tasks and what you are asking people to carry and whether or not it's actually designed for that purpose so there is some broader issues around fit for purpose if you are going to ask people to use their own vehicle you are going to make sure that you can safely undertake the work activity so what is the regulator doing in that space then so there is an issue that is highlighted what are you doing in that space well again some of this discussion is highlighting for myself representing the regulators as to what we can do going forward I think the key message is about the vehicle is a workplace not just an industry in transport it's across all industries if that's a mandated or required aspect of the role then you have an obligation that obligation looks like this I think some of Tanya's work informs that indeed the way a legislation works is that it doesn't have to be a regulation or a code of practice it's available guidance it doesn't have to be practical now this is available guidance that an officer of the organisation to do diligence ought to know and so we can push at that level because they are I guess personally exposed if something goes wrong I think we need to be clear about that they are liable at law for any failure of the system so I think we got those messages out there some strong messages can I just flip that around of course you have all five star rallying and cap for all of your vehicles given that those vehicles have got the most recent safety features on them have the drivers of those vehicles been trained how to use lane assist properly that's a very good point the new braking systems or cruise control properly or those types of things so we're currently looking at that it's part of the review that we had done by Darren because one is the equipment appropriate and two do they know how to use it so we have an annual program called the work driver attestation program and it extends to Greyfleet so drivers must annually attest that they have a driver's licence and that they are legally able to drive throughout that process they also have to do the training and in the package there's also a work driving guideline which then extends to necessarily for Greyfleet but it also extends what we do for business case motor vehicles to Greyfleet in relation to the expectation not the demand but the expectation around servicing maintenance the safety of your vehicle whether it's a recall whatever it is so the awareness of the expectation is there it's missing the actual formal process for it but it's a very good point you get a brand new car next minute it's parking and braking for you and it causes an issue so it's on the job list as Richard mentioned before the data says that over 93% even and more of collisions are caused by human error and so organisations can pay huge amounts of attention to the mechanics of the vehicle but continuing to ensure that people are up to date with the most features on those vehicles and how to use them effectively can be very very challenging I think most of us who go out and buy a late model vehicle don't ever think oh I'm going to have to update my driving schools now so that I can really use these safety features to get the most benefit out of them we don't think that we just assume we have a valid licence we can get into whatever vehicle we'll buy and we'll be able to operate at safety but in fact some of these new features would benefit from driver education so that's just another thing to throw into the mix I'd like to respond to that because I think it's again human error is generally a system's fault that leads to someone behaving unsafely or making the wrong decision it could well be if they had the train the information instructions so that covers that point but there's so much in car connectivity coming the next 10 years the potential for driver distraction is such that what are organisations doing to make sure that drivers know how they're supposed to interact with their Facebook, their email other things that they can do just by voice activation or some other means so it's not only what we've got today it's what's coming and I think that's it's going to speed up in terms of what organisations will be need to do in terms of building the systems to respond to those issues absolutely on that technology side we've had some staff say how do I turn it off because if there's a lane departure it gives me a noise and I don't want that noise so could I turn it off which comes with the systems the system of work should not allow you to turn off a safety feature a key safety feature like that we do actually have someone also ask where's the CD player in my car so the technology is going the other way for them they want it their whole school does your policy include a requirement that people don't answer work calls while they're driving absolutely not given the data that Shane and I were talking about before we came into this webinar about the levels of distraction on drivers and causing accidents and so that's a really interesting workplace scenario if you know that you're going to have a worker in a vehicle travelling from point A to point B to get from one campus to another from one office to another and there are calls made to that worker about important material that they need to know before they get to the next meeting should they be able to take that call what have you done so we've had the conversation around no mobile phone use whilst in vehicles just a general discussion but this is my workplace I get in my car at 7, 8 am I make my calls, I do my work I get to my meeting, I leave my meeting I answer my six messages whilst I'm driving there's no expectation on them for us to impose that isn't reasonable however what we would like to do through education and training is to teach about driver behaviours response time, distractions which I went through with Darren when we did the audit to make them aware to make their own educated decisions around the risk that they're putting themselves in and potentially the community if they choose to answer that call or cannot wait so we can't mandate it I don't think it would ever really get across the line but we can take reasonable action to educate and train to make my own decision I now because of this program put my phone into car mode if it's ringing it will agitate me and I want to answer it if I don't know what it's ringing then when I get out I have a look at it so I make those choices through education so I think it's the best approach through awareness and change the behaviour without mandating because people don't like to be told what to do they need to come to that decision on their own the other aspect of this is that we can put it into a standard we can write it into a policy but the old adage the standard you walk past is the standard you accept that really rings true for this because you don't walk past it you don't see it and so if you don't see it you don't walk past it you're not condoning it but you're not seeing it to take action so this idea of again going back to a usual management systems approach and you've got supervision how do you supervise something that is carrying on the other side of the country in someone's own vehicle we do strongly recommend we use iDevice, Apple devices they've got the do not disturb feature there we do recommend people to use that but I can't put my hand in my heart and say there's 100% compliance to that there's a lot of challenges there's a lot of challenges and you've highlighted today a lot of these challenges and it's evident from our discussion today that there's a lot of people within your organization and probably outside your organization a lot of stakeholders that kind of need to come into this it's not just your problem it's not just your problem it's not just your problem so how have you engaged Richard how have you engaged other stakeholders within or without your organization outside or inside of your organization to get leadership on board to support these challenges and addressing the challenges in Greyfleet it's a good question I think one of the key elements for us has been providing the data knowing that we have a large number of claims for staff reimbursement for kilometres indicating that there is large usage of private vehicles when on a pure cost side you can present that to senior management park risk risk is vitally important but just go if you need to convince a stakeholder say look at what is being paid look at the dollars that are being paid here as well as highlighting the key risk elements and I'm glad to say that our CEO and senior management team are fully on board to support this because it won't work and it won't continue without them I wonder if one of our key stakeholders though is not the driver of the private vehicle we think our senior management team they are a key stakeholder we need it's how we convince them to adhere to the safety elements I think that is important and that's one we're going to be wrestling with over the coming months it's how do you get them to be signing up to participate in the online safety module if that's one of the things we want to do simply to do the pre-start safety check getting our staff to do that with their fleet vehicles is always a challenge I mean now it's important and you can always go back and say well a manufacturer's handbook says you need to do a safety check so here it is the handbook for the car says do a safety check so we really need you to do that safety check but I think we need to engage as one of the key ones Rachel how have you engaged the stakeholders so throughout the whole process we've engaged a couple of external agencies we work closely with fleet because fleet actually manage the business case motor vehicles look at how they're approaching it and then get it into our policies which is through workplace relations we've also engaged with grip insurance because they see the cost to the business and then also the people so as I've said three or four times today we need to get that by and at the end point what works for them because if it doesn't work they're not going to apply it and having that approach of it's just part of your day so several several touch points throughout the whole process for different views certainly for us a lot of the key stakeholders are on board now so if I look from our senior managers and middle managers and for our drivers I'd like to think that we're there that's not to say that we don't have to continue because we can easily lose them it's like any cultural piece you can get people on board and they can easily drop off so it is an ongoing piece that we have to continue with our next steps really are to engage our broader community our broader staff members because that's how the culture is going to be sustained so it is not just about it is also about your family holiday driving to and from work driving the kids to soccer on the weekend so that we can live life to the full I'd like to now just in closing go around the table Shane in closing what are the next steps to make Grayfleet much safer well what I'm hearing at least at the workplace level it's an interest based approach it's about what are the benefits to the workers and to the organisation health and safety holidays etc being safe in that way so building a culture at the workplace level for the regulator perhaps for us it's those messages before about us stepping back and looking at this issue nationally as I pointed out we'll be doing that throughout some processes to see what more we can do once we have the guide indoors so we can use that as a platform to communicate practical information targeted information I think in the middle there it's a supply chain issue it's between organisations or your internal organisation for supplying labour if you like to make sure that everyone's on the page as to why it's an important issue so there's three ways that we can actually effect change Richard your next steps I think our next steps are going down a level in our organisation as I said we have senior level support senior management support we've moved that from middle management to service managers and team leaders getting them to engage particularly in our community care side activating all of the processes that we have in place for the grey fleet because it's fine to have it happen as we've said the policy can stand there but we need to have people following that so I think as that moves down the organisation that will be key getting our fleet system fully up and running to integrate and allow us to report on it is another key one for us I'm not unconvinced that there's not an opportunity for positive incentivising for say particularly our grave, our volunteers so we're asking them to do a lot they are volunteers and this goes not just for volunteers but for non say allowance, car allowance provided people why is the expectation fully on them we want you to get this higher level of insurance to do these things surely there should be some recompense, some level of positive reinforcement for them so I don't have the silver bullet for that yet but that's certainly one of the next steps we want to look at Rachel what would be your next steps? so we're very lucky we're 100% supported by the board and the executive leadership team so the next steps are is to finalise the work driving standard regardless of whether it's in a company car or not get that process in place further to that educate our people on the expectations in relation to that and Lonnie we're the same as you we extend to families as well as out to the community because 99% of people will be in a car or drive a car at some point so if we can have that holistic approach to safety whilst driving is one of the messages that we'd like to get across so we need the sound guideline which then will facilitate and guide the actual activity its behaviour we can have the policy but the papers of absolutely no use to you when things go wrong we need the human element of understanding and acceptance and the trick is getting that message that and really believe that we want them to go home in the same condition that they came if not better okay Rachel mentioned its behaviour so getting that behaviour to be embedded in the business week in, week out, day in, day out it's just that consistent approach and we're now at that stage we're trying to you have to try and innovate to the next step not so much to change what you're doing but to keep that involvement keep it fresh, keep it new when it is actually the same thing that we're still talking about safety on our TVs for 30 years, 40 years at least yes the road, the vehicles have changed but our drive behaviours are still not there and so it's not just a significant issue for us it is a community issue so it is all our employees, their families and protecting them with that process So Tonya from a research, a great research perspective what are the next steps that you see Well I think here in Australia we all regard as being almost a right to get into a vehicle to get on a motorcycle to get on a bicycle and use that to travel to our workplace or travel for work What particularly interests me I think is the impact on small to medium enterprises and even at the lower end people who are working casually people who are in the gig economy people who are travelling from one casual job to another and how these grey fleet are going to impact them most of those people are going to be driving in vehicles that are much older many of them won't even have property insurance for those vehicles and so these issues are really important for them I'd like to explore how we can move the discussion that we've been having today down so that it reaches those people That's really great, thank you very much I'd like to thank each of our presenters today for their contribution as you can see there's numerous challenges in this growing area regarding grey fleet management or workplace road safety more broadly please refer to the NRSPP website we invite organisations to join the partnership after all people are important and the safety of workers just makes good business sense for the panel, thank you very much for your time today Thank you