Show notes: Driver Fitness – What If Your Drivers’ Jobs Were Good for Them? In the first quarter of this year, the Driving for Better Business campaign is taking a deeper look at the area of fitness to drive and driver wellbeing. This month, we’ve published a revised risk management case study for WJ Group – one of the UK’s leading road safety and highway maintenance businesses. With over 650 employees and a fleet of more than 400 vehicles, driver wellbeing is a big focus for WJ. My guest today in WJ Goup’s Sustainability Director Paul Aldridge, and we’re going to talk about how WJ Group mitigates the effects of what is a physically and mentally demanding job role, on it’s staff. Especially those who also drive the company vehicles. Paul Aldridge, WJ Group Sustainability Director https://www.drivingforbetterbusiness.com/podcast/episode/what-if-your-drivers-jobs-were-good-for-them   Useful Links Paul Aldridge, WJ Group Sustainability Directorhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-aldridge-072608109/ WJ Grouphttps://www.wj.uk/ Driver Fitness – what if your drivers’ jobs were good for them?https://www.drivingforbetterbusiness.com/articles/driver-fitness-what-if-your-drivers-jobs-were-good-for-them/   Simon: Welcome to the February episode of ‘Let’s Talk Fleet Risk’ In the first quarter of this year, the Driving for Better Business campaign is taking a deeper look at the area of fitness to drive and driver wellbeing. This month, we’ve published a revised risk management case study for WJ Group – one of the UK’s leading road safety and highway maintenance businesses. With over 650 employees and a fleet of more than 400 vehicles, driver wellbeing is a big focus for WJ. My guest today in WJ Goup’s Sustainability Director Paul Aldridge, and we’re going to talk about how WJ Group mitigates the effects of what is a physically and mentally demanding job role, on its staff. Especially those who also drive the company vehicles. Paul – Welcome to the podcast. My first question is obviously why wellbeing is so important to WJ? As a company, WJ seems to go further than most employers, so perhaps you could tell us about the challenges your staff and drivers face as part of their jobs, and what drives this commitment to their wellbeing? Paul: Sure. Wellbeing is critical to most businesses, I believe. It’s about looking after the whole person, so we’ve got health and safety and wellbeing, and they fit into this group – it’s better for the company – better for productivity – and better for the people that work for us. What could be wrong with that? Our people face a lot of hazards – we’re working in the middle of the roads putting lines down, and working with hot materials is one of our principal activities so it’s fundamental to what we do.  The obvious hazards are materials and the vehicular activity so it’s providing a safe space – that’s important . Over the last few years for everyone working in the public realm there seems to be increasing abuse that people have to face. It seems strange to me that somebody feels they have the right to shout and swear at the people that work for us. They’d feel weird if we walked into their offices and did it to them, but they feel they have the right to do it to our workers – it’s not good for general wellbeing. There are also wider problems – air pollution is a real big problem for us as a society and by the nature of our work we contribute to it. There’s the physical risk – muscular skeletal risk, and as I say, the hazards of working with hot materials. Some years ago we started looking at this and we looked at the idea of stealing the title from our work with Business in the community – what if your job was good for you? We divided wellbeing onto several pillars – physical wellbeing, mental wellbeing, financial wellbeing and social wellbeing and it all fits together in trying to provide a holistic wellbeing for our people. Simon: I think that’s really important. I like the idea of the pillars, So,