How to Manage the Business Risks of Employee Drivers: An SAP Concur Conversations Podcast with Motus

If your organization requires your employees to drive for their jobs and/or has a mileage program, your organization has risk and liability, even if the driver is using a personal vehicle. Your organization must understand and manage those risks and take them into account alongside considering mileage as an expense category. 

In this podcast, Jonathan Steele, Director of Product Management at Motus, a leader in optimizing mobile workforce management that specializes in employee reimbursement programs, driver safety, and compliance monitoring, speaks with Jeanne Dion, Vice President of the Value Experience team at SAP Concur. Steele and Dion discuss some of the challenges organizations face in identifying and managing employee driver risks, share some real-life stories, and offer tips on how to protect your organization and ensure your drivers are safe and well covered. 

You can listen to this episode on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite place to find podcasts. 

Risky Business: What Every Employer Needs to Know About Driver Liability

Learn more about business driver risks and how to mitigate them in this SAP Concur Conversations podcast.

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Employee drivers: An accident waiting to happen 

Driving on behalf of a company can be as routine as running an errand, attending an off-site meeting, or driving to the airport to travel for business. Steele says that regardless of how much or what type of driving an employee is doing if they are on the road traveling on behalf of your company, there are some basic requirements your company must ensure they meet. For example, do they have a valid driver’s license? Are they insured? Are they driving their own vehicle or someone else’s?  

Steele shares a real-world story about one of Motus’s customers who had an annual motor vehicle record program. The customer had an employee driver with some risk indicators, but those risks weren’t regularly identified because the company conducted checks once a year. Ultimately, a significant incident resulted in a multimillion-dollar settlement. The takeaway for that customer was that if they had been aware earlier, they might have been able to avoid the result. “That’s not a happy story, but it is a demonstration of here’s what can be done proactively to understand what could happen down the road,” Steele says.  

“One of the opportunities here is, of course, motor vehicle records and monitoring those records to ensure that if there is risk happening for a given driver that you’re aware of it,” Steele says. “Some of the key things that we look for [are]: Are there speeding violations? Is there a DUI? Does this driver have a practice of issues in any sort of pedestrian zone? And so really some of these behaviors can significantly increase future issues.” 

Steele says, “You may not need the full extent of a risk program for every one of your drivers, but you do need to be able to understand who’s doing what and [your preparedness] for them to do that.”   

Are employees really covered? What to know about uninsured drivers  

“Drivers today are facing a lot of challenges. Vehicle insurance premiums are outpacing every other category of inflation in the U.S., and that means one out of every seven drivers is choosing to either reduce or even forego carrying auto insurance,” Steele says. “Those lower policy options or even driving uninsured can be a real risk to employers because any accident is terrible, but the average cost of a non-fatal accident is $75,000.”  

Steele says this risk is particularly important for businesses to be aware of because “as of the first half of 2023, 10.7 million drivers were going uninsured on the road. How many of those drivers are in your workforce? Do you know? If you can establish programs that help you identify those things proactively, that’s what also helps your company mitigate your risks.”  

Because of this, “it is very important that companies have the right type of policies, programs, and awareness in place to identify what that risk may be, and also to catch it before it becomes too much of an issue,” he says.  

Learn more about business driver risks and how to mitigate them in this SAP Concur Conversations podcast.