How Effective Is Your Cell Phone Policy?

One of the main difficulties you face with cell phone policies is enforcement. After all, when employees are on the road, there’s usually no one there to look over their shoulder and monitor their actions. Are they following your policy directives on cell phone use while driving or aren’t they? Hard to know.

The only real way to get employees to follow your rules is to develop a sensible policy, explain the safety and liability reasons behind your policy clearly, and give employees some guidance about when and where they can use their phones safely to make or receive calls, check messages, or text.

For example, rather than banning cell phones outright, you might require employees to pull over and stop before making or receiving calls. You can also require voice mail on cell phones used by drivers so that they can resist answering the phone while driving.

Remember, too, that studies show even hands-free phones can be dangerous while driving. It’s not just that employees take their eyes of the road when dialing or answering a cell phone, it’s that they may take their minds off their driving while engaged in a phone conversation.

One way to increase buy-in to your cell phone policy is to involve employees in the policy development or revision process. Often, when workers have input into a policy, they feel that they have a greater stake in it, and consequently, they’re more likely to follow it.

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Is your cell phone policy effective? Do you even have one? If not, we do, and it’s already written and ready to use, along with every other safety policy you’re likely to need, in BLR’s Essential Safety Policies. Examine it at no cost and with no obligation to purchase. Get details here.

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Legal Issues

When reviewing your cell phone policy, you want to take legislative prohibitions into account. Some states, counties, and municipalities have passed laws prohibiting the use of cell phones while driving. You need to be aware of the law in those areas where your employees drive.

There’s also the issue of negligence. If one of your employees is using a company-issued or company-reimbursed cell phone, or conducting company business on a cell phone, when a traffic accident occurs, the company could be held liable for the accident.

There have been numerous cases in recent years where companies have shelled out millions in settlements or jury awards when people were injured or killed in accidents caused by employees who were talking on the phone at the time of the accident.

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Get the safety policies you need without the work. They’re in BLR’s Essential Safety Policies program. Try it at no cost and no risk. Find out how.

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Ready-Made Policies

To prevent motor vehicle accidents and to lessen your liability for accidents caused by employees, it’s essential to have a policy to deal with the cell phone use by workers who drive on the job. As BLR’s Essential Safety Policies emphasizes, a clear, unambiguous policy that discourages the use of cell phones and other devices while driving should be part of your organization’s vehicle use policy.

Essential Safety Policies  provides you with such a policy, as well as many other must-have workplace policies. You can use these policies "as is" or adapt them to your organization’s particular needs and style. Each section provides you with comprehensive lists of points to cover, whether you want to adapt one of the policies or draft your own.

And Essential Safety Policies  doesn’t stop there—it gives you a detailed list of other important things to consider when you implement these policies, such as the impact of laws and regulations, interrelation with other policies, employee education, liability issues, and more.

Take these kinds of materials and multiply them by more than two dozen key safety topics, and you’ll know why Essential Safety Policies  is such a valuable tool for busy safety professionals. These policies provide a ready-to-modify or use-as-is safety handbook for all your workers, with minimal effort on your part.

The policies are backed by a tutorial on policy writing and essential materials such as handbook receipts. A CD version is also available.

If your organization could benefit from supplementing (or perhaps having for the first time) a complete set of ready-to-use safety policies, we highly recommend a 30-day, no-cost, no-obligation look at this program. Go here and we’ll be pleased to send it to you.

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