Has anybody started with each employee being assigned an individual bonus pot at the start of the year and then you deduct costs, such as vehicle damage or parking fines, that they’re responsible for from their particular pot of money?

Stewart Lightbody: We discussed the concept but we don’t have a fleet management system complex enough to deal with that number of transactions. So until we can get our data sorted out I don’t think we’re in a position to start measuring people that accurately. We could do it subjectively, but I don’t think that’s what we really want to do.

Richard Crook: I have a huge problem with over-reward. If there’s a bonus scheme, that should be for a range of business objectives being met and that should be for everybody.

Do you think peer pressure can play a role in offering a reward to a group of drivers rather than paying out a bonus according to individual performance?

Stewart Lightbody: If you can raise the overall performance of the majority then that’s no mean feat. Setting rewards at a group level could do that, but you will always have problem drivers to deal with.

Shane Thompson, transport manager, Safety Kleen: Three-and-a-half years ago, we had 62 vehicles going off contract and we were faced with end-of-contract charges of around £175,000.

We chose several different approaches. We reward our drivers on an individual basis. We do it half-yearly, so if they do have an accident in the first six months they re-join the scheme in the second half of the year. We started getting accidents going unreported in the beginning, but by implementing an inspection scheme we overcame that problem.

Rory Morgan: During 2011, something like 12% of our incidents were recorded as hit while parked. We reduced that by instructing the drivers that if they are hit while parked they have to call the police to get an incident number. It reduced the number of incidents by 50%.

Shane Thompson: We also fitted ‘well driven’ stickers on the back of our vehicles, giving other motorists the opportunity to call and comment on their driving. We were getting 40 or 50 calls a year, which wasn’t great, but last year we had 12 calls. The complaints have decreased and our accident rates have fallen.