This article is brought to you by our sponsor Alphabet.
Do organisations need to worry about employee engagement when it comes to car benefits? The answer is yes.
Employee engagement plays a much more significant role than is usually recognised in determining fleet operating costs, productivity and safety performance. As a leading provider of all types of car scheme, from traditional company cars to all-embracing multi-funded solutions, Alphabet has first-hand experience of the difference that engaging with staff makes to the success of car strategies. At its simplest, engagement means keeping open a two-way channel of communication with employees by getting across the benefits of your car strategy and asking for feedback on where that strategy isn't meeting needs or expectations.
Responding to that feedback can be challenging, but if you don't address the key issues, drivers are more than likely to vote with their feet.
In the last three years, Alphabet has helped a number of major organisations to reverse declining take-up of company car benefits and to increase choice and flexibility of car packages within their workforces at little or no extra cost. In every case, sustained engagement with employees played a key part in ensuring a successful outcome.
Safety is another important factor in this context. Analysis from Alphabet's recent Risk and Reward 2007 report suggests a worrying shortfall in constructive engagement by employers in the form of education and training. Cash opted-out drivers are significantly less likely than company car drivers to know about company safety policy or obey rules on, say, mobile phones. Of course, training and safety checks cost money, but these are invariably outweighed by the resulting savings on repairs, downtime, fuel, and general wear and tear issues.
Whether your goals are greater safety or a better-fitting fleet strategy, or indeed both, encouraging more engagement from your business drivers can only yield positive results.
Richard Schooling, commercial director, Alphabet
The views and opinions in this article are those of our sponsor, Alphabet, and do not necessarily reflect those of www.employeebenefits.co.uk.
