Punctuality is key for mobile workers. There appear to be few situations that cause customers more angst than waiting for overdue deliveries or engineer visits.

In order to avoid this situation and ensure mobile workers arrive on time, organisations should pay close attention to fleet productivity.

The amount of time it takes to get from one job to another, the amount of jobs completed in a day and the order in which jobs are carried out all have an impact.

This new research study* lifts the lid on the pressures faced by drivers that prevent them from conducting duties efficiently, safely and in a timely fashion.

For example, 24% of UK van drivers claim they are always under excessive time pressure and a further 23% say this is regularly the case.

Factors such as traffic delays, excessively demanding schedules and poor planning all appear to contribute to this situation, suggesting there is more businesses can do to improve efficiency, particularly in routing and scheduling.

Dynamic planning solutions, achieved through the integration of telematics with routing and scheduling platforms, can help address this issue. Daily work schedules can be planned using  historic journey times, up-to-date traffic information and GPS location to help ensure jobs are scheduled in a manner that minimises mileage, fuel spend and journey time.

The research also raises an employee safeguarding issue, as 39% of van drivers say their jobs negatively impact on their personal lives. To add to this, 31% regularly or always finish late and only 8% take their full contractual lunch break.

Therefore, by striving to improve fleet productivity, employers can also take steps to address the morale and wellbeing of their staff.

Check out the full stats in our infographic below :

*Research was conducted face-to-face among 100 UK van drivers in January 2017.