Manually pulling MVR reports for employers, also known as motor vehicle reports, is no small feat and is an exhausting process. You may be shaking your head just thinking about the hours set aside for your annual, bi-annual or at-hire pulls.
While your efforts to keep track of your company’s driver risk are noble, there’s a better way to do things. Reviewing MVR reports and keeping track of your company’s drivers doesn’t have to be daunting or time-consuming.
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The traditional way of managing driver risk creates a significant bottleneck in productivity. Manual MVR pulls are an incredibly time-consuming and tedious process. Not only does translating them appropriately require the skills needed to accurately make sense of and decipher violations state-by-state, but also requires extra manpower.
If at times you think you’re making up the amount of time you’re spending on manual MVR pulls and reviews, we can tell you that you aren’t. We’ve crunched the numbers and have determined that manually reviewing one MVR takes around 20 minutes in total. Multiply that by your total number of new hires, current drivers and those who have passed through your company’s doors that are no longer employed– the minutes spent add up quickly.
Add in the great deal of work occurring after the initial review, including follow-up conversations, audits and required signoffs. Not only does this further add to the administrative burden, but your MVR analysis that you thought could be quick and easy quickly turns cumbersome and daunting.
Have you considered additionally what you may not be seeing on MVRs? Even the most thorough safety and risk professionals may fall victim to the visibility gap and those unrecorded violations that matter most to your organization.
Such immense effort in manually pulling MVRs becomes harder to reason when knowing that the information in front of you is near-immediately outdated. This leaves you with what we call a visibility gap, or the lack of insight into your driver population the moment you pull a static MVR.
Consider this scenario. You hire a new driver and pull their MVR on January 1. That driver receives a DUI on January 8, but since your company pulls annual MVRs, you won’t know about that incident (along with any others incurred) until January 1 of the next year. Worrisome, isn’t it?
Manually pulling MVRs provides some insight, but not all that’s needed. Unreported incidents like parking lot fender benders or backing up into a light pole may be equally as important to your company as a serious car crash.
Think of this example – if most of the job your drivers are hired for requires backing up a vehicle multiple times a day, and someone has five unreported parking lot fender benders, that could be a sign of things to come. How are you tracking this information?
Is it part of your MVR review process to double-check that specific drivers haven’t been involved in other incidents? If tracked in a spreadsheet or other program, you’re adding additional time to the quarterly, annual or bi-annual review process. It’s not worthwhile to skip out on such detailed information, as a history of reckless, careless, inattentive or negligent driving increases the likelihood of a crash by 64%.
You’re missing vital data indicative of further reckless behavior that either needs training or some sort of reprimanding, prompting the question – how do you change this?
Companies are relieving that nagging headache stemming from manual MVR pulls through technology like continuous MVR monitoring. Simply put, MVR monitoring gives you full insight into your driver population, automatically alerting you to any negative employee violations in near real time.
Not all MVR solutions are created equal. The right solution can provide a huge impact on businesses, insulating hard driver risk management efforts from a variety of negative factors including risk, litigation and rising insurance premium costs.
MVR monitoring can also bring about numerous benefits. We rounded out a list of the top nine key benefits that come when implementing MVR monitoring.
Faster identification of drivers who require some form of safety intervention protects against incidents harmful to the company and brand reputation. Brand loyalty is hard to gain and easy to lose, with 67% of survey respondents agreeing that unless they trust a company behind a product, a good reputation only goes so far.
MVR monitoring provides near real-time alerts on violations. This ensures that you aren’t in the dark when it comes to MVRs. In turn, you’re receiving the most comprehensive view of driver risk for each driver, thanks to the ability to see violations and unreported incidents with crash and claims data, all on one platform.
The time suck that comes with manually pulling MVR reports for employers is immense and exhausting. Imagine what you could do within your business if experiencing the average $50,000 in annual administrative savings that come with implementing MVR monitoring? What about the countless hours within your days, weeks and even months that will be freed up from lack of manual MVR review?
While we know that you still have a concrete safety policy in place (and we commend you for that) that informs your overall safety program, MVR monitoring brings a sense of autonomy to your role not felt with bogged down manual driver risk management processes. Interventions are not only easier but also more targeted, giving you the insight needed to see if safety efforts like driver training are working.
Drivers who are aware they’re being monitored often display safer behavior – otherwise known as the Hawthorne Effect. With an average 22% reduction in average monthly violations for drivers enrolled in MVR monitoring, the correlation between monitoring and changed behavior is not to be ignored.
Receiving a notification whenever a negative violation is incurred creates the opportunity to incorporate intervention tactics upfront. Coaching and training are two of our top suggestions. With such immediate information at your disposal, you’re able to enact more effective safety and risk mitigation strategies sooner than you would if manually pulling and dissecting MVRs – with the ability to target specific behaviors.
Whether it’s because of a suspended license, serious moving violation or series of repeated negative behaviors, MVR monitoring helps identify people who shouldn’t be driving on behalf of the company. This can save you many sleepless nights and surprises once encountered during your bi-annual, annual or even monthly MVR review process.
The faster employees can be notified of problems with their driving records, the faster they can take responsibility for making necessary changes. In some cases – for example, a license suspended for not paying parking tickets – the employee may not be aware of the suspension or invalid license. The ability to quickly identify and rectify any license status issues provides your drivers with the opportunity to remove themselves from the three to five percent of those driving with suspended licenses.
Not only can you save many paper cuts and blurry vision from staring at MVRs far too long, but also can save on immense costs. Through the elimination of a potential temporary hire or two and state fee gauging, unnecessary waste will start to dwindle. Your bottom line will thank you.
There’s a quick way to become employee of the month – through MVR monitoring. After all, who doesn’t want to save both time and money? It’s a win-win combination that will be sure to gain you adoration.
Curious to see how technology can transform the driver risk management of any sized company? Download our white paper to learn more.