Introducing an electric vehicle (EV) salary sacrifice scheme for your business is a great win as part of an overall ESG strategy. It will help reduce your fleet carbon footprint and is highly tax efficient for both employee and employer. Plus, it is an in-demand employee benefit, with a YouGov survey finding that 74% of employees would like their workplace to offer the scheme.
So, how does your business get started? Here are four key steps for successful scheme implementation.
Step 1: Define a clear salary sacrifice plan
It is important to clearly set out what you want from a salary sacrifice scheme to enable you to measure performance. The plan should include:
- Key metrics
- Looking at the business’s current fleet environmental impact to establish a baseline for ESG reporting. This could incorporate metrics such as:
- Fleet carbon footprint using a method like Michelin
- Number of electric / hybrid vehicles vs ICE (petrol / diesel) - broken down by company vehicles, commercial vehicles and grey fleet
- Total annual fleet miles
- Clear scheme objectives including KPIs on carbon reduction and scheme take-up. Include the metrics within your overall ESG strategy
- Defined ownership assigning management responsibility for salary sacrifice, enlisting help from all relevant teams, such as human resources, operations and finance
- Employee eligibility parameters considering who will be able to access the scheme and any conditions around part time worker eligibility, probation period completion, minimum salary level or maximum points on a driver’s licence
Step 2: Find a trusted salary sacrifice partner
A strong partnership is essential to make the scheme a success. Look for a provider with proven expertise who can demonstrate:
- Alignment with your business goals and values and a company who will partner with you for thelong-term
- Specialist knowledge andsolutions – ensure that the provider is experienced insalary sacrifice. Check for any additional services you may need - for exampleearly termination insurance
- Easy to use technology – understand what system will be used to facilitate the scheme and askfor a demonstration. Look for technology that will be simple for employees touse and also provides good management reporting
- A good range of EVs - check that abreadth of vehicles are available which will suit your employees requirements
- Support for employees – ask how the provider will work with your team to make the transition to EV simple – both during and after the vehicle selection proces
- Sound customer references – look for recent testimonials, case studies and positive feedback
Step 3: Launch your scheme and continually promote
A great salary sacrifice launch is critical and so is ongoing promotionto ensure continued scheme take-up. Tips for success include:
- Make the launch impactful - Use the launch to positively showcase the new employee benefit. It is also a good opportunity to reiterate the business’s ESG strategy and environmental commitments. Consider launch activities that will suit your team, examples are:
- Webinar
- In-person / all-team meetings
- EV demonstration and test drive day
- Support new EV drivers - Driving an electric car will be new for most people so good onboarding and ongoing support is key. Training could be in the form of workshops or on-line sessions as well as providing useful content on charging, useful apps, and so on
- Keep promoting the scheme – Maintaining awareness is important as not everyone will be ready to take up the scheme straight away. Your provider should be there to support and offer guidance on keeping employees engaged with the scheme
Step 4: Measure and communicate ESG progress
Being able to demonstrate and quantify the carbon reduction achieved from salary sacrifice as part of an overall ESG strategy is crucial, including:
- Regular reporting
- Salary sacrifice figures should form a core part ofthe business’s overall ESG reporting. It may also be relevant to incorporate qualitative employee feedback and satisfaction scores
- Provide updates on the scheme internally
- Share progress with employees to showcase success and support scheme take-up. Salary sacrifice updates should also form part of all wider ESG updates
- External communication
- Communicate your ESG success externally to demonstrate environmental credentials to customers and wider stakeholders. This could be via the company website, blogs or regular customer communications
Salary sacrifice for electric vehicles in action
learnd, a building management systems specialist, recently implemented a salary sacrifice scheme with Gofor.
At learnd, Net Zero isn’t just an end goal, it's a philosophy we integrate into every decision, so it’s crucial that our company cars align to our overall vision to help decarbonise ourfuture.
We are so pleased to see the scheme delivering benefits and the take up of electric vehicles in the business has been really strong. We’re delighted to be improving the vehicles available to our teams whilst dramatically reducing the carbon impact of the work we undertake for our customers.
Gofor’s expertise in transitioning us to a lower carbon fleet has been invaluable.
Andrew Bishop, Group Health,Safety & Compliance Manager, learnd
Next steps
Want to understand more about salary sacrifce for electric vehicles? Gofor is here to help. Our friendly team of salary sacrifice experts can provide practical advice on getting started.
Looking to learn more about decarbonising your fleet as part of an ESG strategy? Download our recent ESG whitepaper.
