Tesco.com chose RoSPA for Driver Training
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| Tesco's fleet of 1,700 vans and 4,400 drivers have helped the supermarket become the worlds largest dot.com grocery supplier |
Tesco create a pool of RoSPA approved trainers within its own ranks
With thousands of vans supporting a huge online shopping operation, supermarket giant Tesco needs to keep its drivers safe and its vehicles on the road. Jo Stagg reports.
The face of grocery shopping has changed profoundly in the last few years.
With the advent of all things dot-com, the weekly sortie to the supermarket has become a distant memory for a growing number of us.
Instead of piling into our cars and heading off to the shops, we gather around computers and place orders online, sitting tight in the comfort of our own homes to await the arrival of our goods.
Tapping into the shift in our shopping preferences is big business and, since the launch of its online service just seven years ago, Tesco has become the world’s largest dot-com grocery supplier. Last year, 200,000 orders were placed online each week, with sales reaching nearly £1 billion.
The backbone of the huge operation is Tesco’s fleet of 1,700 vans and 4,400 drivers, or customer delivery assistants (CDAs) as they are now known.
Selecting and retaining good CDAs, and keeping them and their vans safe and on the road is paramount to the success of the high-profile service.
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| Tesco and RoSPA work together to manage occupational road risk |
Van damage is costly – not only are there the repair bills and knock-on effects on insurance premiums, but the ensuing time a vehicle is off the road can impact on customer service. Driving around in 3.5-tonne vans decorated with dents would also do little for the image of the UK’s biggest supermarket.
And that, of course, says nothing about the human cost of accidents. Research indicates that about 20 people are killed and 250 seriously injured every week in crashes involving someone who was driving, riding or otherwise using the road for work purposes.
Tesco identified that a robust training and assessment programme for new and existing CDAs was needed at the heart of its accident prevention strategy. Along with reducing the number of accidents, it was also hoped that investing time in its CDAs could go some way towards demonstrating they were valued employees, which, in turn, could lower staff turnover rates.
An innovative strategy was sought…
Cliff Cheeseman, Tesco training manager, picks up the story. “Tesco recognised about three-and-a-half years ago that it needed to do something to train drivers,” he says.
“The first scheme was to select a good driver and see if he could train the other drivers.”
But inevitable questions arose from within the drivers’ ranks regarding the suitability of the chosen few.
“By the end of six months it was time to move on,” says Cliff. “It was showing no benefits.”
Tesco began looking further a-field for inspiration and a successful driver training programme, based on a partnership with an outside road safety organisation, was identified in the United States.
The seeds for a partnership on this side of the Atlantic were sown when Tesco contacted the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA).
The first year of the relationship saw a Tesco trainer delivering theory to CDAs about safe driving, with RoSPA trainers doing “on the road” practical sessions. Again, however, the arrangements did not prove as successful as originally hoped.
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| Richard Holman is one eleven Tesco training managers |
Cliff was recruited to address the problem. “When I reviewed where we were, the training at the time was all about driving,” he says. “My spin on it was if we are going to train people to do a job, let’s train them to do the whole job. Let’s include the RoSPA content and the Tesco content – what we expect the driver to do at the store, what we expect the driver to do at the customer and on the road.”
Cliff immersed himself in the issue, taking a five-day RoSPA advanced driving course, at the end of which he achieved his Gold advanced driving qualification, and completing RoSPA’s National Diploma in Advanced Driving Instruction.
With the insight he gained, a unique collaboration was born, breaking new ground because Tesco decided it wanted to go further than just having RoSPA people coming in to train drivers – it wanted to create a pool of RoSPA approved trainers from within its own ranks to take forward the approach.
Step forward, Richard Holman.
Richard is one of a new breed of Tesco employees. Although he has been with the company for around 24 years, his role for the past six months embodies the shift in how Tesco views its training of CDAs.
Richard, of Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, is one of 11 training managers for Tesco.com located across the UK. From his office base in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, he plays a central role in CDA development at 20 stores in the Midlands.
To gear up for his new job, Richard, who has worked in various Tesco posts, including as a deputy store manager, took a five-day RoSPA advanced driving course followed by an advanced driving test, in which he, like Cliff, achieved Gold standard.
He recently completed RoSPA’s National Diploma in Advanced Driving Instruction and is now aiming to become an Approved Driving Instructor (ADI), a Driving Standards Agency qualification, which will give him the ability to coach drivers in addition to assessing them. Two of Tesco’s training managers have achieved ADI status and four are now working towards the final part of the three-part qualification.
CDAs come into contact with the Tesco-RoSPA partnership at a number of different stages of their career – the scheme touches job applicants wanting to join Tesco right up to those who might have been in their post for years.
Richard, 39, says: “From the word go, Tesco has a policy of “selecting the best” in the interview process. We also want to make sure that anyone we take on keeps improving in their job.”
For prospective CDAs the first hurdle to overcome is a basic test of their abilities, including map reading and writing legibly, which is carried out by the store they have applied to. And, of course, their driving licences are checked.
If an applicant is successful at this initial stage, the store contacts a training manager, such as Richard, to arrange a driving assessment. Five applicants are usually assessed on one day.
“The national average is that only one in five people pass,” says Richard, vastly lower than the four in five pass rate achieved by applicants who took one of Tesco’s previous, and less rigorous, driving assessments.
He continues: “The assessment is like a driving test – we are looking at whether they can drive and whether they are confident driving a vehicle of that size.
“If they pass, we feed that information back to the respective manager in-store and we leave it to the store to select the candidate they want.
“We are using the same professionalism as Tesco does in all fields. And it is starting to work - we are starting to see the benefits already.”
Those benefits are that, less than two years since the scheme was introduced, Tesco has noticed a reduction in the turnover rate of new CDAs in their first six weeks with the company. It is thought that such success is coming about for two reasons - the company is able to build-up a better picture of the candidates most suited to the role and the applicants are able to find out in more detail if the job really is for them.
When a candidate has been successfully recruited, it is then time for a standard Tesco induction, after which the rookie CDAs are “buddied-up” with existing drivers who have demonstrated a flair for helping new colleagues.
During this period, which could last up to a fortnight, new CDAs learn about all aspects of the job including the computerised orders system, how to load vans, how to deliver to customers, and the van checks that are required by law.
A final training room session follows to get them to Tesco’s “bronze” employee level, part of a competency grading scheme operated throughout the company for all staff.
New CDAs then become part of the pool of existing drivers.
But what, you might ask, of these existing drivers? How do they fit into the new and improved system of training?
The current aim is to get all CDAs validated by RoSPA and to Tesco’s bronze level. To achieve this, stores joining the driver training scheme are in effect “closed” to dot-com orders for one evening.
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| Tesco launched its online service in 1999 which now reaches 97% of UK house holds |
RoSPA trainers and Tesco training managers, like Richard, use the time to work with the store’s CDAs in a three-hour session.
The first hour gives employees the chance to voice their opinions on their job and the next two hours focus on four aspects of the role - what to do at the store (such as checking and loading the van), on the road (including the Highway Code and five keys to safe driving), with the customer (for example, where to park), and returning to the store (trying to reduce the number of accidents on the way back to the store when a CDA’s concentration might have dropped).
Following the session, the RoSPA trainers – of which there are currently four working with Tesco - validate the CDAs, making sure they are competent to do the job, including checking eyesight and driving licences.
Tesco wants an annual validation of every driver and in the future, when they have achieved ADI status, the Tesco training managers will be able to carry out the process.
For Tesco, the CDA training programme, which currently covers around 200 stores around the country, including a unique dot-com-only depot in Croydon, is not just about having altruistic ambitions in terms of “investing” – the buzzword of modern corporate life - in employees.
As we have seen, there are some very real, and very measurable, reasons behind it. The effect on employee turnover has already been cited and morale is said to have risen among CDAs because they feel increasingly valued.
As a huge corporate enterprise, the cost implications for Tesco are also crucial.
In terms of spending on van damage, the budget has not decreased but Tesco, for the first time, is under-spending against it. This is even despite a rise in the number of CDAs on the road. “When you put all the driver training stores together and compare them against the rest of the country, the driver training group is outperforming the others by 12 per cent,” says Cliff. “There has been a 12 per cent saving already, which is remarkable when you consider that not all the drivers in the stores with the scheme are trained instantly.”
The reason for this reduction in spending is that the number of road accidents has fallen in stores covered by the scheme, and, says Cliff, the decrease has been “dramatic”. In fact, during a six-month trial of the scheme in north London, accident frequency fell by 50 per cent, says RoSPA.
And that’s not all. “There has not just been a reduction in incidents but also a big increase in legal compliance,” continues Cliff. “We can sleep more comfortably knowing that we would not be liable for corporate manslaughter charges and that our van record books and vans are checked before they go on the road.”
Richard believes the key to the success of the partnership between Tesco and RoSPA comes through blending the vast pool of knowledge of the two organisations – Tesco as a major retail employer and RoSPA with its driver training and fleet management background.
“Combining the expertise of RoSPA and the expertise of Tesco is the way forward,” he says. “Tesco.com is growing at such a rate and we need to show we are safe on the road. I think everyone else will follow our example.
“It is about showing due diligence to the general public as well as to our own drivers.”
The partnership is also extending into other areas. The first Tesco driver employed in Poland recently gained his RoSPA Gold advanced driving qualification and, back in the UK, Tesco is now working with RoSPA to produce a poster displaying manual handling guidance.
Accident review boards, consisting of trainers and CDAs, are also being established to look into all road accidents involving Tesco vans. If an accident is found to have been preventable, trainers will meet with the CDA involved to cover any aspect of their driving identified as needing attention.
And when the RoSPA and Tesco trainers are not working with specific individuals, they spend time on store audits, during which they check that van record books are up-to-date and address any specific issues identified by store managers.
The whole scheme, which will be rolled out to cover more stores, looks set to go from strength to strength.
Rick Wood, Head of Training, RoSPA Driver & Fleet Solutions says: “Managing occupational road risk should be embodied in an organisation’s mainstream health and safety policy and that is what is starting to evolve at Tesco.
“Although still in its infancy, the joint-working of Tesco and RoSPA has already proved hugely successful.
“In order to be truly beneficial the training must not be a one-off tick-box exercise – it must be sustainable and deliver measurable benefits.
“The early signs are encouraging and we look forward to the partnership continuing in a similar vein.”
RoSPA Courses
Adopting a “solutions” driven approach, RoSPA designs and delivers an extensive portfolio of courses for fleet drivers, fleet managers, road safety professionals and members of the public, including BTEC and DSA approved courses.
See www.rospa.com/drivertraining/courses/ for more details.
For more information about rospa courses visit: www.rospa.com/trainingandconsultancy/
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RoSPA is a registered charity: Registered Charity No: 207823 Patron: Her Majesty the Queen RoSPA Head Office: Edgbaston Park, 353 Bristol Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham B5 7ST, UK |
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