Have you ever been in a situation where you employ someone to carry out certain tasks in your business to later realise that the delegated tasks have not been carried out to the standard required to comply with your undertakings or even worse not carried out at all?! It’s a nightmare and one we all dread!!
We recently worked with a client who had experienced the nightmare and the consequences for our client and their business are dire. Let me tell you the story…..
Our client is an independent haulier running a small fleet of eight trucks. He does this single handily and does his best to make sure everything runs smoothly but one day tragedy hits his family and a close family member is taken unwell with a serious illness!!
What’s he to do? He needs to keep running his business, it’s his livelihood but he also needs to look after his relative. Its time to delegate and bring in some help before everything he’s worked for is lost because of the time off he needs to take. Cue the process of employing an experienced transport manager.
He’s safe now! He can take the time off he needs to be with his family at this difficult time and he has someone who is going to run his business to the standard it needs to be run at to ensure compliance…..well that’s the idea anyway.
Fast forward a year, 365 days your transport manager has been responsible for the day to day operation of the business and our business owner has only popped in as and when he can. Sometimes for a day, sometimes for an hour…..it’s been really difficult at home but now all is well again and our business owner is returning on a full time basis. It’s now he sees what’s happened to his business and it seems the shit has hit the fan!
On the surface everything looked great, when he was popping in everything seemed to be in order but it turns out the transport manager hasn’t really done a thing to keep on top of the compliance side of your operation.
NO tacho analysis done, NO driver record checks done, NO staff training done, basically anything that helped the company stay compliant hadn’t been done!! **Cue profanities and major panic**
Now it gets worse because our business owner didn’t actually discover this until one of his drivers was stopped for a roadside check and this huge can of worms was opened!
Luckily our business owner acted fast and contacted us to carry out a company audit to find out what areas needed the most urgent attention…. Our findings were every area apart from payroll!
We worked with him and the traffic commissioner and we’re working closely with our business owner to help him become compliant once again but its cost him £1000s and you know what all of this could have been avoided.
If our business owner and/or transport manager had stayed abreast with the latest legislation and carried out checks on their own business to make sure they were complying none of this would have happened.
With this in mind we advise companies to carry out their own regular internal company audits on the transport side of their business, so should there be any downfalls in any part of their business they can be identified and resolved quickly before it gets out of control.
Self-auditing your business is a cost effective way to ensure you’re compliant without the need to bring in an external auditor.
Self-auditing will give you the opportunity as a business owner or manager to get an overview of your operation, to identify areas of weakness that need improvement, to bring to light any compliance issues and most importantly self-auditing gives you the opportunity to resolve the issues before it becomes a major problem.
Now don’t be frightened by the word auditing, it isn’t scary and doesn’t have to be difficult. It does have to be in-depth but with a little guide to help you I think you’ll do a smashing job of self-auditing your company and ensuring compliance.
Is your business worth a few hours of your time to make sure you’re getting it right? I think it is and that’s why I recommend that EVERY operator carries out a self-audit at least once a year, preferably twice! It doesn’t matter if it’s just you or if you have 100s of employees, what matters is compliance. This is your life, your livelihood, your responsibility and your business and only YOU can make sure it’s done right.
You don’t know where to start? No problem, we have that covered. The link I’m going to provide you with will give you access to a complete guide to carrying out self-audits along with a full audit template for you to complete. It’s an easy, simple process and I know you can do this for your business!
Here’s the link http://bit.ly/2eNrlH5 . Sign up, use the guide and complete the audit on your company. It’ll cost you £85 which is a huge saving on bringing in an external auditor……You never know, it could save your business!