RoSPA has launched an improved version of an award-winning psychometric risk assessment tool to bring new benefits to organisations wishing to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of their employees' driving.
Driver Profiler 2 is an online software package that assesses the risks associated with an employee's use of the road, enabling informed decisions to be taken about training that might be required.
The updated package is easier to use than the original version, with more colour and clearer text. Each assessment, which takes less than 30 minutes, measures driving-related attitudes and behaviour without the need to leave the workplace. An individual risk rating is then generated.
An improved reporting system gives managers access to more detailed results about the level of risk posed by individual employees on the road. The information can then be used in decisions about further training, which might, for example, involve classroom theory sessions or in-car training.
Organisations using Driver Profiler 2 also now have the option of customising the online pages by adding their own logos.
Rick Wood, Training and Quality Assurance Manager in RoSPA's Driver and Fleet Solutions team, said: "Driver training is a key part of an organisation's system for managing occupational road risk. It is crucial to establish what training an individual employee really needs so that the intervention is effective, both in terms of cost and its ability to improve safety. Risk assessments, which are a legal requirement, play an important role in this respect because they enable informed decisions to be taken.
"Thousands of people have taken a Driver Profiler assessment since the software was first launched, and we hope the new version will further benefit a wide range of organisations with employees who use the road for work. It is important to remember that work-related road safety is not just an issue for firms that employ professional drivers, but also for those that have any staff members who drive as part of their job, perhaps between sites, to meetings or as sales reps."
Driver Profiler is based on the academic work of Dr Diane Haigney and behavioural experts at Aston and Manchester universities, and was originally developed in partnership with BT. It was named Innovative Road Safety Product of the Year at last year's Highways Magazine Excellence Awards and won a British Safety Industry Federation Product Innovation Award in 2005.
Free trials of Driver Profiler 2 are available. Call 0121 248 2019, email fleetsolutions@rospa.com or visit www.rospa.com/drivertraining/ for more information.