Toll boss Brian Kruger credited for backing strong approach to chain of responsibility.
Toll is moving to position itself as a leader on chain of responsibility (COR) through a string of initiatives aimed at lifting compliance standards internally and throughout the industry more broadly.
The company’s group manager of road transport compliance, Dr Sarah Jones, says there is an extensive list of ongoing measures in place to promote best-practice safety standards, including custom-developed online COR training modules, an internal COR newsletter and stringent auditing processes for sub-contractors.
Jones outlined the initiatives at this year’s Chain of Responsibility and Heavy Vehicle Safety Conference and credited Toll managing director Brian Kruger as a driving force behind them.
“We very consciously want to be the organisation that when customers think chain of responsibility, they think Toll Group. And we very consciously aspire to be recognised as leaders in this space,” Jones says.
She says the company wants its entire workforce to complete online COR training modules by March 2016 and that Toll employees have enthusiastically embraced the internal COR newsletter.
The newsletter summarises court decisions relating to COR, myths and misconceptions about the law and answers to questions from staff.
It has caught the eye of the National Road Safety Partnership Program, which is a collaborative networking forum that aims to improve road safety.
“This has proven so popular that I have actually had approaches from the National Road Safety Partnership to ask if they can reproduce it and I get emails from our customers saying, ‘can we please have this’?” Jones says.
“I think what this indicates is that there is a real hunger in our industry for information in bit-sized digestible pieces that the industry understands.
“We also audit our sub-contractors. We provide information and advice and we make sure that all of our tenders and contracts are reviewed to make sure that we are not indirectly or directly incentivising or promoting unsafe behaviours.”
Furthermore, Jones says Toll sits on a maintenance group responsible for amendments to national heavy vehicle laws and is becoming increasingly active in policy debates instead of relying on industry associations to argue its case.
In all this, Jones says Kruger is largely responsible for making it happen.
“In terms of being recognised externally as leaders in this space, I have to say it starts with Brian Kruger, my managing director. If Brian’s approach to safety were not as uncompromising as it is I would not be able to do my job with any degree of authenticity,” she says.
Toll’s stance appears to be paying dividends, based on the figures Jones provided at the conference. She says the company had only one internally detected mass breach in the June quarter, while its lost time injury frequency rate and road transport breaches have fallen markedly.
Jones featured alongside the Roads and Maritime Services, the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator and Road Freight New South Wales at this year’s Chain of Responsibility and Heavy Vehicle Safety Conference.
Photography: Brad Gardner