Investing in fleet safety is one of the most impactful decisions you can make for your organization. Enhanced safety not only provides peace of mind and a reduction in at-fault incidents, fleets can also lower insurance-related costs and turn their safety track record into a competitive advantage.
By creating a workflow to review safety events and coach your drivers, you can:
- holistically understand your fleet's safety risk factors
- reduce high-risk behaviors through driver coaching
- create a culture of safety and accountability
We recommend reviewing your Safety Inbox every day to assess safety events, decide what action needs to be taken, and prepare for driver coaching conversations.
To get started:
- Review your Safety Inbox to triage incoming safety events.
- Determine your approach to events in the "Needs Coaching" status and prepare for the coaching interaction.
- Conduct and track coaching session progress.
See it in action:
- Review your Safety Inbox daily to assess safety events and take action to clear your inbox.
Your goal is to end each day with no events in the "Needs Review" status. All events should be reviewed and then moved to the appropriate status based on your plan of action.
Triage your inbox with the following steps
- Make sure the safety event has an assigned driver
- Dismiss the events that represent inaccurate safety events or where the driver was not at fault - i.e., False positives for tailgating, rolling stops, etc.
- Assign the safety event with one of response statuses ("Needs Coaching" or "Needs Recognition") if possible
- Assign safety events in "Needs Coaching" status to a coach
For safety events where it’s not immediately obvious what actions need to be taken, leave it in "Needs Review" status.
Go through your "Needs Review" Events again more thoroughly- Click into the safety event and watch the video
- You may need to request additional video with Video Retrieval
- After more in-depth analysis, decide if the event should be dismissed or assigned to "Needs Coaching" or "Needs Recognition" status.
What does a tidy Safety Inbox look like?
- Every safety event has an assigned driver
- Every safety event should be triaged and assigned to the appropriate response status: "Dismissed", "Needs Coaching", or "Needs Recognition"
- Every safety in "Needs Coaching" is assigned to a coach
- Go to the Coaching page to review all "Needs Coaching" events, decide how you want to coach your driver, and prepare for the coaching session.
The Coaching page organizes safety events by driver and behavior. Click on a driver to review all events associated to that driver. Next, decide which method you want to use to coach the driver: manager-led, self-coaching, or hybrid. Be sure to assign a coach to the event if one was not already assigned.
Selecting your coaching approach
Samsara gives you the flexibility to choose the right coaching approach, here are three general coaching response workflows:
Traditional Manager-led Coaching Description
In-person / face-to-face coaching sessions to:
- Educate a driver on their unsafe behavior.
- Align on improved driving habits
- Prevent similar unsafe driving behaviors in the future.
Benefits
Emphasizes the importance of safety to drivers in person
When to use this approach
Effective when addressing a driver with repeated safety infractions or particularly egregious safety incidents that need to be addressed directly.
Additional Resources
Read more about a typical Driver Coaching Workflow in a manager-led situation
Driver Self-Coaching Description
Asynchronous approach that sends an electronic record of the safety issue to the driver’s Samsara Driver App directly with any relevant notes recorded by their coach.
Benefits
Maximizes the time and resource of your team
When to use this approach
Effective when addressing drivers with infrequent, low-stakes safety infractions that require only quick corrections or feedback.
Additional Resources
Learn more about Driver App Virtual Coach
Hybrid Coaching Description
Blended approach to coaching. Coach shares the safety event with their driver via Virtual Coach in the Driver App and discusses the event and coaching feedback live on the phone with the driver.
Benefits
Combination of Manager-led and Driver Self-Coaching approaches.
When to use this approach
Effective for drivers who cannot make it in person. Maximizes the benefits of manager-led coaching sessions conducted in person with the efficiency gains of self-coached drivers.
Additional Resources
Learn more about Driver App Virtual Coach
Reviewing Safety Event Details
To select the best coaching approach for a given safety event, it's important to review safety events thoroughly. You may have already completed some of this preparation when you reviewed the "Needs Coaching" events. If you will not be the one coaching the driver, you can leave thoughts or comments for the coach in the event’s activity log at the bottom of the page.
- Date and time of the detection, and the harsh event detection data, such as Max G-force and the vehicle sensitivity setting.
- The trip map and trip summary to investigate the location and vehicle associated with the trip.
- Watch the extended video of the event and review the vehicle Speed graph and (when available) additional speed-related information relevant to the event, such as brake pedal use and acceleration.
- In the event of an ambiguous video, request an additional minute of video surrounding the event to better assess the situation.
- Supplement any missing data on the event.
- View any automatically applied safety labels on the event and adjust any incorrect labels or add any additional missing labels to better train your organization’s detection algorithm, plus increase the accuracy of your reporting, which is heavily segmented by these labels.
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Conduct and track coaching session progress.
Driver Self-Coaching: Send the safety events and appropriate notes to the driver. Be sure to monitor and ensure that the self-coaching is conducted in a timely manner.
Traditional Manager-led Coaching:
- Access the Upcoming tab of the Coaching report to review the drivers that have recent safety events that were earmarked for coaching during safety inbox triage.
Filter the report by key details to focus on your assigned coaching sessions that should be completed:
- Filter by Coach to pull the list of drivers that you’re specifically expected to coach
- Filter by Coaching Type to isolate your view on the coaching needs that are earmarked for manager-led coaching.
- Sort by the Score field or Last Coached field to prioritize your list of upcoming coaching needs by drivers that have the least safe driving record or have had the least attention, respectively.
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Schedule the coaching session with the driver and in preparation, review the event details that triggered the coaching session.
- Click Coach from the driver name at the top of your prioritized list to preview the behaviors slated for coaching.
- Each type of coachable behavior appears on the left-hand side of the coaching session’s window.
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Review each coachable type of behavior, prepare for the coaching session, and clear out any individual events that do not require coaching:
- Review the Safety Tip for a description of why the event was flagged and to review recommendations for correcting the behavior.
- In the case of multiple events per behavior, you can:
- Review the video thumbnails for each individual event by hovering over the video thumbnail to autoplay the incident or click the video to view a larger video format of the event.
- View details about the safety event’s associated trip.
- Sort events by Newest, Oldest, or Starred.
- If the event does not need any additional investigation or coaching, you can dismiss the event.
- When the coaching session begins, click Coach from the driver name at the top of your prioritized list to start the coaching session.
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Behavior by behavior, review the contents of the page with your driver:
- Review the Safety Tip for a description of why the event was flagged and to review recommendations for correcting the behavior.
- Review the video thumbnail. Hover over the video thumbnail to autoplay the incident or click the video to view a larger video format of the event.
- Click add ( + ) next to Behavior Notes to summarize your coaching session or add training and behavior notes and then Save the notes to the coaching session.
- After you finish the review and have completed driver coaching for the behavior, mark the behavior as coached and then confirm and mark all videos (both watched and unwatched) as Coached.
- Complete the coaching session via the Coaching Session Summary:
- You can log any additional notes to the session summary before the driver and the coach sign the session.
- Both the coach and the driver must sign the session to acknowledge participation.
- Hit the Complete & Submit Session to complete the session.
- Access the Upcoming tab of the Coaching report to review the drivers that have recent safety events that were earmarked for coaching during safety inbox triage.
Take it to the next level:
- Save time in your Safety Inbox by setting rules that automatically flag safety events to "Needs Coaching"
- Streamline coaching assignments by setting up automatic coach assignment to drivers
- Drive accountability and coaching urgency by setting up coaching due dates. By default a coach has 14 days to conduct a coaching session.
- Set up In-Cab coaching to provide real-time feedback for drivers to improve their habits while on the road.
