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FLEET MANAGEMENT
Moreland also has its own mechanics, which means
education and training benefits added to the program,
enthusing minds and extending skillsets.
“It’s about a full energy transition plan,” Nesbitt
answered about considering running forklifts, heavy
vehicles and equipment. “The business is focused on
those big consumption targets, so once that’s been
achieved it’ll filter down into the rest of the fleet because
you’ve already made the investment,” he concluded.
When it comes to fleet investment, safety is without
doubt one of the most precarious tightropes to walk as
you manage and your drivers operate in a four-wheeled
workplace. Dr Darren Wishart, psychologist and
researcher, put to his audience the idea of littering.
“Forget safety for a minute. If I did a survey about
people who value cleaning up rubbish, being tidy, most
people, on a cultural level we’d score pretty high on
that,” he said. “Citizen behaviour is when you walk out
of this room and notice a McDonald’s wrapper on the
ground, you wonder whether or not to pick it up.
“Now if in the workplace someone sees something
not being done safely, do they tell someone, or does it
become someone else’s job?”
GOVLINK » ISSUE 2 2017
Dr Lucia Kelleher from People Data applied some basic
human psychology to the issue of driver behaviour in our
demanding modern world, one of the biggest variables
for any fleet manager no matter the size of their fleet.
“The brain actually realises it can’t deal with all this
stuff going on in the world around us and it goes on
autopilot – the freeze part of ‘fight, flight or freeze’ that
you’ve probably heard before,” she explained.
“Think about how we evolved out of the trees, these are
functions designed to keep us safe, but they’re negative
emotions, they shouldn’t be happening constantly. Busy
Brain Syndrome has pushed us into having negative
emotions all the time, so when we set out to tackle the
traffic, we’re already in a bad mood. Road rage requires
zero cognition, it’s a reaction. BBS is an insidious
addiction because we don’t know it’s there – an alcoholic
or heroine addict has all the signs. But with phones, the
addiction is the update, the likes, the notifications.”
Kelleher described a major connection her research has
made between the re-learning process we face in giving
complete attention to driving in order to survive, where
she spoke to train drivers about their constant focus on
what lies ahead.