Tool Kit
Driver Assessment
If your employees drive for work, make sure they have a valid driver’s licence and a clean driver’s abstract. You also need to know they have necessary driving knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Learn how to check their driving record and assess their abilities using our SkillCheck driver assessment tool.
Verify driver qualifications
Before hiring anyone to do work driving or allowing any employee to get behind the wheel, check their driving qualifications. Verify and record the information by following these steps.
Check the issue and expiry dates to see if their BC licence is valid. Then check the licence class against ICBC codes to make sure it’s correct for the vehicles they will drive. If they will tow certain types of trailers or drive a vehicle with air brakes, make sure they have the necessary special endorsement. Make photocopies of their documents for your records. .
Ask the driver if there is any reason they’re not allowed to drive in BC. An employee who drives while prohibited or while their licence has been suspended can create serious legal problems for themselves and their employer. Your organization should have a policy to deal with these situations. For example, require employees to tell you about any driving violations, suspensions, or prohibitions right away.
A driver’s record (also called an abstract) shows suspensions, violations, and penalty points from the last 5 years. These records provide a snapshot of past driving behaviours, which may be an indicator of how the employee may drive in the future. Ask them for a current record. They can get a copy of their Driving Record and Insurance History from the ICBC website.
Fleet operators can make bulk requests for NSC abstracts using the National Safety Code Abstract request form.
Check driver records as part of your hiring process, and each year after that. Ask the employee to explain any violations, suspensions, or prohibitions. The table below is an example of how an employer might respond if an employee gets penalty points while driving for work.
| Driver Penalty Points | Employer Actions |
|---|---|
| 1 to 3 | Supervisor asks driver for an explanation. Next steps may include monitoring, skills training, and disciplinary measures. |
| 4 to 6 | Supervisor meets with driver. Next steps may include limiting or suspending driving duties. Supervisor decides on monitoring and training options. |
| More than 6 | Supervisor meets with driver. Steps may include driver being suspended from work. Supervisor decides next steps, including training and monitoring. |
| Driving suspension or prohibition | Supervisor meets with driver. Work-related driving is suspended immediately until suspension or prohibition ends. Manager decides next steps, which may include termination. |
Talk with your broker or agent to make sure all employer-owned vehicles used for work are correctly insured. Keep a copy of the current insurance certificate in each vehicle. Keep the original in your office records.
If employees use their own vehicles, check to make sure their insurance is up to date.
Assessing driver behaviours
Once you’ve confirmed an employee is legally authorized to drive, find out if they have the knowledge, skills, attitude, and driving behaviours they’ll need to drive safely for your workplace.
Find out:
- Do they know how to operate the vehicle properly?
- Do they have the skills to drive safely?
- Do they have a good attitude toward driving?
- Do they apply the correct driving behaviours they’ll need for driving in your workplace?
Use our Driver Assessment Procedure Template (Word 20KB) to develop guidelines that will help you answer those questions
The best way to understand an employee’s driving behaviours is to ride along with them in the vehicle. What you learn can help you match driving tasks to driver abilities. For example, a less skilled employee can do easier driving tasks. When they have more experience, they can take on more challenging ones.
We recommend assessing skills before hiring drivers or as part of your road safety orientation, and then every 2 to 3 years after that.
Do another assessment every 2 or 3 years to check that the employee isn’t becoming complacent or developing poor driving habits. It’s also a good idea to do assessments whenever the driver starts significantly different driving tasks, such as using a larger vehicle or taking a more difficult route.
Employers, supervisors, or other experienced drivers can do driver assessments. The driving assessor should:
- Have a valid driver’s licence and clean driving record
- Have demonstrated abilities as a safe, competent driver
- Have experience and be familiar with the driving they evaluate
- Be knowledgeable, objective, fair, and patient
- Be actively employed in the organization
Once the assessment is done, the assessor needs to meet with the driver to discuss scoring and results. Use notes from the assessment to identify what the driver did correctly and to explain what they need to improve.
Whenever possible, their supervisor should participate in the review. This helps them understand what driver training is necessary. It also helps them decide whether they need to limit the employee’s driving until driving skills improve.
Remember that nobody is perfect. Nearly every ride-along assessment will suggest that the driver has room to make improvements. Use the information to build a training plan that helps the driver develop necessary driving behaviours. Use the resources and tips in our Driver Orientation and Training Tool Kit to help build your plan.
SkillCheck driver assessment tool
Our SkillCheck tool shows you how to do ride-along assessments. You can then use the results to help decide if an employee is ready to take on the driving you plan to assign them, or whether they need further training.
The tool was developed with the Justice Institute of British Columbia Driver Education Centre.
Using SkillCheck
SkillCheck features a downloadable step-by-step guide and scoring form plus helpful videos. They identify key driving behaviours to look for during assessments and explain how to score driver performance.