Have you considered their spouse/partner?
It is important to look beyond the employee, according to IDS. The employee’s wife/husband/partner may also be driving their company car and those parties need the appropriate licence and familiarisation.

What about agency drivers?
Colin Tourick says: “If a driver is truly temporary and has been hired by an agency, it will be usual for the agency to carry out licence checks and, in this case, fleet managers will ensure that the agreement with the temp agency is watertight and makes it clear what the agency will and won’t be doing in this regard.

Whatever the agency won’t be doing – e.g. familiarisation briefings for a particular vehicle – the fleet manager needs to organise.”

Case study: Siemens

Siemens has employees coming to the UK from other countries and commodity manager Paul Tate asks their line manager in the country of origin to ensure they have a valid licence and to look into whether they and any nominated drivers (partners, etc.) have any pending points which could affect that.

“We want to check they are authorised to drive on company business,” he says.

“If not, for EU drivers, we have an agreement with a hire company and the driver has to take out the hire company’s insurance – they take the risk.”

“International colleagues have an international driving licence which is valid for 12 months. We look out for the anniversary and make sure they have done a course and taken a UK driving test or they cease driving then.”

Tate sends foreign drivers a link to an online course, which familiarises them with traffic procedures and laws.

“Once they are here, we monitor them according to the company risk procedure,” he says. “That flags up if they have a consistent profile for accidents and we tackle that in the same way as we would any other employee.”

Case study: Momentum Instore

Retail implementation agency Momentum Instore has around 600 drivers, a handful of who drive on a foreign licence.

“We check their licences through Drivercheck, which has access to the relevant countries’
driver data,” says fleet administrator Helen Brislane. “It is a lengthy process and takes about two weeks to verify that the driver has a licence.

“However, the service does not check whether that licence is clean, just that the licence exists.  

“This means that we really don’t have a good understanding of the driver’s history and the standard of driving that we can expect.”

As a result, Brislane is considering making it a condition of employment that foreign drivers exchange their licence for a UK one at the outset.

Foreign and temporary staff watch educational videos as part of the company’s induction programme.

“One is made by us and gives details of what to do in the event of an accident,” says Brislane.

“We also have a one-to-one video induction, which is on the Department for Transport’s Road Safety website Think! and features advice from Cheshire Police and the Highways Agency on safe driving distances.

“We’ve found that using videos often results in a greater understanding of what we expect from our drivers and so is particularly effective when dealing with drivers whose first language is not English.”

Vehicle handover and reporting damage can prove a particular challenge with foreign drivers whose first language is not English.  

“Sometimes there can be instances where drivers have not understood the literature about the correct processes to follow,” Brislane says.