A transport policy does two jobs: it tells employees what they are entitled to, and it tells the transport desk what to do when someone falls outside that. Policies fail at the second job far more often than the first.
Use the sections below as a skeleton. Every line in square brackets is a decision your organisation has to make — the point of the template is to surface the decisions, not to make them for you.
1. Scope and eligibility
The most disputed section, because it is usually the vaguest.
- Which employees are covered — [grade, employment type, contractors, interns]
- Which sites and which shifts
- Whether eligibility follows the grade or the shift timing (they conflict more often than people expect)
- How new joiners and transfers are added, and within what timeframe
- What happens when someone is eligible but lives outside the served radius
2. Service standards
- Maximum ride time, stated as a ceiling and not a target
- Pickup window — how early is too early, and what counts as late
- Distance or radius limits, and how exceptions are approved
- Nodal pickup rules: when door pickup applies and when it does not
- Vehicle class by route type and headcount
3. Night-shift safety
The section a regulator or an internal auditor will read first.
- The hours the night-shift rules apply from and to
- Escort requirement for women employees on first pickup and last drop
- No-first-no-last-drop logic, stated explicitly
- Driver vetting, background verification and re-verification frequency
- Live tracking, SOS and who answers it — a named desk, not a vendor helpline
- What the transport desk does when an escort is unavailable at dispatch time
4. Booking, cancellation and no-show
- Cut-off time for roster confirmation
- How ad-hoc and exception trips are requested and approved
- No-show definition, and how many before a consequence
- Whether a no-show is charged to the cost centre — and who is told
5. Escalation
Write this as a path with names and timeframes, not as a mailbox.
- Level 1 — transport desk, with a response time
- Level 2 — site admin or facilities lead
- Level 3 — HR and the vendor account manager jointly
- Safety incidents: a separate, faster path that bypasses the above
6. Cost ownership
- Which cost centre carries the trip — site, function, or the employee grade
- Employee contribution, if any, and how it is recovered
- Who approves out-of-policy spend, and at what threshold
- How transport cost per employee is reported, and to whom
7. Vendor obligations
- SLA definitions: on-time arrival, vehicle condition, driver conduct
- Document compliance — permits, fitness, insurance, driver licences — and who checks expiry
- Penalty and incentive structure, and the evidence required to apply either
- Data handling: what employee data the vendor sees, and what they may retain