Key Steps For A Well Defined Transport Policy

Policy is the rule book for various stakeholders in the transport operations. All processes, activities are build around these policies that are sacrosanct in nature. It has been observed that in most of the cases, the policies are not quantified or measurable leading to misinterpretation and conflict between stakeholders. To avoid such scenarios, it is advised that the policy should be specific, measurable, common for all, communicated and reviewed periodically.

Define business goals – Any automation exercise should clearly identify the business outcomes and the driving motivating factor. Different companies based on the nature of business may have different business objective. Some company might be look for automation just to improve user experience, while other might be looking at cutting down the cost. Once the business goal is defined, it is easier to frame strategies to achieve those outcomes.

Remove Subjectivity – Traditional transport policies are built on subjectivity and doesn’t include all parameters that work in all scenarios. A classical example is – routes will be planned in a way that an employee doesn’t travel more than 90 minutes. Is this applicable to employee whose current travel time is 30 mins? Certainly not. But this aspect is not covered by the traditional transport policy. A more objective policy should be defined as – routes will be planned in a way that an employee doesn’t travel more than 90 minutes or 15% whichever is lower. This will ensure that the routes prepared are uniform without any exception and the rule can be applied to all employees irrespective of their distance from the office location .

Find the right balance between cost and employee comfort – This is one of the most critical parameter as employee comfort is always subjective and cant be defined. However, a quantified transport policy will make sure that all employees are entitled for same comfort level. Also, when comfort parameter is defined, the same can be tweaked to see its correlation with cost. So, if the organization is aware of the maximum budget, this mechanism can help organization to zero down on the comfort parameter.