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Operator Safety & The Psychology of Gamification

Technology is advancing rapidly in the telematics industry. The industry growth is changing the conversation about fleet management, especially fleet safety. Operator safety is now about more than monitoring driver behavior. New technology builds upon monitoring with configurable coaching mechanisms that help operators take a more active part in your safety initiatives. Even with proper training, drivers will eventually start to fall back into their old habits of speeding, idling, or hard braking. Forming new, safe driving habits requires intrinsic motivation and goal-setting. To make long-lasting changes to driver behavior you need to find a way to keep safe driving a top priority for drivers. These goals need to be important enough to your drivers that they continually strive to reach them. Your drivers need to want to stay motivated, but how do you motivate them? Using driver behavior monitoring technology that combines event triggers, real-time alerts, and driver scorecards that leverage gamification, you can create individualized coaching plans to help your drivers stay safe on the road. Get The Quick-Start Guide to Creating an Integrated Safety Program Motivating Fleet Drivers With Gamification Gamification is the use of innate psychological triggers to drive player engagement and retention. Turn safe driving into a competition. Studies show that people are 66% more likely to do something if it is part of a game. People are motivated by incentives and competition. There is an innate need to be better than everyone else, especially if that status is visible to other people. An example of this in healthcare is the boom of fitness trackers. By measuring the number of steps a person takes and allowing them to share their stats and compete against their friends, those companies are motivating people to change their lifestyle and also to use their product. Even without a concrete incentive, this concept is still effective. The same concept applies to driver safety. The competition is a motivational element. There is a desire to be the best. Driver Scorecards How do fleets incorporate gamification? By scoring driver behavior based on common unsafe habits such as exceeding the posted speed limit and harsh turns. These scores are a way to measure one driver’s habits against another. Naturally, you get driver “buy-in” once they are told they are competing against each other. For the best results, pair scorecards with customized coaching to help drivers improve their scores. Motivation to drive safer will increasingly keep your drivers engaged and safe, while also protecting your business. How Do Driver Scorecards Work? Operator safety technology monitors driver behavior and flags designated unsafe behaviors and assigns each driver a score based on that information. Safety scorecard reports are then created and compared to other drivers. If your driver scorecards are allowing you to rank drivers and display results, drivers are more likely to participate. These scorecards calculate ranking based on safety events allowing a fleet to improve overall driver safety. Driver scorecards can help: Recognize safe drivers Identify and coach risky drivers Reduce accidents Improve insurance rates Minimize costs associated with downtime and maintenance IntelliShift’s Operator Safety Management with driver scorecards provide historical benchmark trends and insight into drivers’ on-road activities and then attributes risk and safety scoring based on speeding, hard braking, aggressive turning, hard acceleration, HOS, and unauthorized vehicle usage. Interested in creating a more holistic fleet and asset safety program? Talk to a Safety Expert today.