Driver mental health and psychosocial risk in logistics

They arrive as one incident, not two

In transport, sustained pressure and fatigue are not separate items on a risk register. They come from the same things: hours, rostering, pace set by someone else's system, time windows that assume nothing goes wrong. And when an incident is investigated they are examined together, because the questions an investigator asks about a driver's last 72 hours are the questions a psychosocial assessment asks about their working conditions.

Which is the argument for treating this as a register item rather than a welfare initiative. Your safety manager already owns the register.

The duty, and what it covers when the workplace moves

Section 18B of the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994, as amended in 2022, requires employers to assess the risks to safety and health at the workplace. For a fleet, the workplace is the cab, the depot and the warehouse floor, and the duty follows the driver rather than sitting at the address on the letterhead. The DOSH Guidelines on Psychosocial Risk Assessment and Management at the Workplace, published in 2024 and known as PRisMA, set the method.

To be plain about what this is not: a psychosocial risk assessment is not a fatigue management system, and running one discharges no separate obligation you carry about hours or rest.

Scope by depot and rotation, not by company

A 600 person operator is not one assessment, and scoping it as one is how a fleet ends up with a report that says nothing. PRisMA is assessed by work unit, and in logistics that unit is rarely the legal entity. It is the depot, and within the depot, the rotation.

Three groups almost always need scoping in their own right, because the guideline's risk factors concentrate differently in each. Long haul drivers on night rotation carry isolation and broken sleep together. Last mile riders paid by the drop carry externally set pace and customer contact. Warehouse crews on nights carry scan rate pressure without the autonomy a driver at least has over their own cab. Which of them returns high risk is what the assessment is for, and we do not pretend to know before running it. Averaging the three together hides whichever one is struggling.

Reaching people who have no desk

The mechanics decide this, not the content. A hotline staffed 9 to 5 reaches a driver never, because those are driving hours. An email campaign reaches an inbox the driver does not have.

So screening and support both go to the phone already in the cab. People join with a personal mobile number and a QR code, handed out at the depot briefing or dropped into the dispatch group, with no work email at any point. The screening window stays open long enough for every roster to pass through it, rather than closing on a Friday that suits head office. Warehouse units screen on shared kiosks, with sessions that leave nothing on the device. Counselling is booked around routes, including evenings and weekends. Support content is built for a rest stop, not an evening that does not exist.

Language decides whether any of it is used

A driver pool is rarely monolingual, and in Malaysian and Singaporean logistics it is usually not close. Support runs in 8 languages, and the screening questionnaire in 6, including Nepali and Bengali.

The count matters less than the quality. A badly translated questionnaire does not produce a cautious answer, it produces no answer, because someone reading a sentence that does not quite make sense assumes the whole thing is not meant for them. So translation is reviewed rather than generated, and checked by someone who speaks the language before it goes near a depot.

What this looks like at a depot

At Tower Transit Singapore, a public bus operator, the platform launched through on site activations at the Bulim, Jurong East, Mandai and Yishun depots: on the depot floor between duties, rather than a webinar link in an inbox. Engagement touchpoints have continued since. It is the closest published parallel we have to a fleet rollout, and the mechanics carry over to haulage.

What management sees, and what it does not

Drivers ask this first, and in an industry where a tracking system already knows where everyone is every minute, the suspicion is earned rather than irrational.

Individual answers are never shown to the employer. Reporting is by work unit, and a unit too small to anonymise is not reported separately. Your safety manager receives patterns by depot and rotation against the guideline's thresholds, never people. Nothing connects to telematics, dispatch or any performance system. The full position is on the trust page, and the wider programme on the EAP page.

Where a fleet starts

If you want to know where your operation stands before committing to anything, the gap check is 8 questions and takes about 5 minutes. The assessment process is set out in full, what PRisMA 2024 actually says is explained separately, and Malaysia pricing is published on the PRisMA pricing page, banded by headcount. If a DOSH directive has already arrived, start here instead.

Questions fleet operators ask

Last reviewed 24 August 2026. Regulatory references: Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994 (Act 514), Section 18B; DOSH Guidelines on Psychosocial Risk Assessment and Management at the Workplace (2024). Report an error to hello@eveandai.com.