Interviewed for DfBB on the Jazz FM Business Breakfast Show

I was interviewed by award-winning business journalist and broadcaster Michael Wilson on his Jazz FM Business Breakfast show on Thursday 11th July 2019 about the findings in the Driving for Better Business Leadership Survey.

MW: A new report commissioned by the Driving for Better Business initiative has revealed concerning behaviour amongst UK bosses. Almost half expect their employees to answer their mobile phone when they’re driving, while one in 6 employees say they’ve been involved in an incident due to a phone call from a colleague. Well let’s speak to Simon Turner from Driving for Better Business.

Some of these figures are particularly shocking aren’t they, Simon, but first of all, obviously people do ring you up while you’re driving and you can use the handsfree can’t you, reasonably safely?

ST: Good morning Michael. Well, you say you can use it safely but there’s a growing body of evidence now that says using a mobile phone handsfree is almost as distracting as using a handheld phone.

It was a really interesting statistic that, when taken with some of the other findings highlighted one of the major problems to me - and that is a lack of communication with business drivers because while your boss might want you to take the call, they generally don’t want you to crash doing it.

Most of the directors in that report said they had reviewed their company’s driving for work policy within the last year and whenever I look at these policies, most of them include guidance on how the company expects you to deal with a mobile phone call whilst driving. It’ll tell you don’t take it if you feel unsafe or, if the call is urgent, pull over and return it when you have got somewhere safe.

One of the problems is these policies and this guidance is often only distributed to drivers of company vehicles, yet 90% of the drivers we interviewed used their own car, and half of those said they’d never received any of that guidance.

MW: There’s a lot of ignorance about what is and isn’t legal isn’t there, for example one in 20 directors said the hard shoulder was a safe place to take a phone call – that’s not legal is it.

ST: No, its not legal, and that’s quite frightening. And actually it was one in 8 of the drivers that we researched who thought it was a safe thing to do. Imagine you’re driving along the motorway and you see some lorries wandering in and out of their lanes – if you’re parked on the hard shoulder, that’s a very dangerous thing to do. The police and traffic officers will stop and move you on very quickly if you’re found doing that.

MW: This is a failure isn’t it in communicating best practice for driving at work, an of course driving at work, whether we like it or not takes up a lot of time, doesn’t it, because when you’re driving you’re not working at the same time? What do you think can be done to improve this, do you think?

ST: I think there’s two key points here.

The first is to ensure that all your drivers have got a copy of the policy and the guidance on using mobile phones, and if you’re listening now and you’re driving for work, and you’re expected to take a call – if you haven’t seen your company’s driving for work policy, ask to see a copy of that.

The second is if you’re a director running a firm and you expect your staff to take calls, have a look at some of the case studies that we’ve got on our website from some of the companies that have decided to ban use of mobile phones while driving because some of them are very big companies, a lot of them have done a lot of soul-searching before they’ve done it, but they’ve found it hasn’t actually harmed their productivity when they’ve banned mobile phones, because they’ve learnt to work around it in other ways and maintain their productivity.

MW: So, very important to understand that UK bosses themselves are liable, legally, for this?

ST: Yes. Ultimately, there is a risk in many things with driving for work, whether it’s using a mobile phone, or being fatigued, or whether you’re issuing delivery drivers unrealistic schedules, there is a risk in many elements of driving for work and the directors are ultimately responsible for all of that.

MW: Thank you very much indeed. That was Simon Turner from Driving for Better Business.

You can listen Michael Wilson’s Business Breakfast show live on Jazz FM every weekday morning at 6am