According to latest research from the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA) , salary sacrifice is the fastest growing car funding method in the UK, helping drivers across the UK to access brand new electric vehicles at significant savings.
It’s a fantastic benefit for employers too, giving a boost to staff retention, talent attraction, environmental strategy, and cost savings.
Here’s some tips to help launch, and make the most of, your salary sacrifices for electric vehicles benefit.
Partnership is key
The first step is to select the right salary sacrifice partner to work with, one who has clearly made the necessary investment to create a robust product proposition.
Alongside being able to offer a wide range of EVs, with flexibility on areas such as cost and delivery dates, we also recommend that businesses ensure they select a partner who can support them with the necessary governance around their salary sacrifice proposition, in areas such as payroll, tax and compliance guidance.
And being able to offer clarity around insurance is crucial. Gofor offer motor insurance as standard, meaning businesses can add a salary sacrifice car without any impact on their existing company policy, while we offer different early termination options, launching a plan that gives the business total flexibility around areas such as premiums, cost, and risk.
Understanding the sacrifice
Being able to clearly articulate the benefits, and the simplicity of salary sacrifice for electric vehicles, to your employees is crucial.
At its most basic level, we encourage businesses to consider salary sacrifice for EVs through a similar lens to better known salary sacrifice benefits, such as healthcare, pensions, and cycle to work.
Businesses should then ensure they are able to provide their employees with clarity around areas such as early termination insurance, motor insurance, as well as the detail around Benefit in Kind, income tax and national insurance contributions.
A good salary sacrifice partner will be able to provide the necessary insight and materials to help this education process with employees.
Involve the correct stakeholders
In our experience, getting the right stakeholders within your business involved as early as possible in your on-boarding plans is key to a successful adoption of your salary sacrifice benefit.
Defining the right stakeholders can be determined by the size of your business but in an ideal scenario, a combination of an HR representative, who has oversight of your overall employee benefits package, a finance representative, who can help embed properly within your payroll system and manage salary queries, and an internal communications representative, who knows the best methods and channels to engage your employees, tends to be a good mix.
Consider your internal promotion
You’ve decided to add salary sacrifice to your employees’ benefits package and you are ready to launch. Getting your internal promotion right is crucial, and it takes more than an ‘All Employees’ launch email.
There are lots of channels and activities here that businesses can leverage to educate employees and we work with our clients on a joint internal roll out plan as soon as an agreement is signed.
From initial launch emails, education articles for company intranets, on-site EV demo days to launch, joining business town halls or similar all staff meetings, and a dedicated webinar series, there’s lots of options and touchpoints to explore.
A good example here is our work with Roc Technologies, a technology solution provider. We complimented an on-boarding webinar series here with an on-site launch day where Michael Hook, our salary sacrifice product specialist, and Paul Reeves, Roc’s account manager and our EV infrastructure specialist, were on hand to deliver a presentation and drop-in info sessions, whilst also having a Polestar 2 available for any Roc employees who wanted a test drive.
Make it as easy for your people step
From a Gofor perspective, we see salary sacrifice as a combination of a b2b and b2c product and, as a result, expectation on the customer journey is high.
We’ve made a significant investment in the customer journey part of our proposition in recent months to try and ensure we meet these expectations. For example, we’ve just launched an online driver portal as a means of making it as simple as possible for drivers to compare the different cars available to them at a sacrifice that works for their individual circumstance. This a far more engaging way for employees to shop around and initial feedback has been incredibly positive.
Interested in finding out more about Gofor’s salary sacrifice scheme? Check out our article showcasing our new portal where drivers can access the latest electric vehicle (EV) offers, and compare the different cars available to them at a salary sacrifice level that suits their circumstances.
Thinking about adding Gofor’s salary sacrifice solution to your company benefits package?
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