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SUSTAINABILITY
THE GREEN AGENDA
The transport sector is often seen as an easy target to beat the ‘clean up your act’ drum. But there’s a lot that fleets can be doing to improve sustainability, discovers John Challen
Paul Gilshan, Tusker
Under the microscope
With Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) playing an ever-increasing role in shaping the policies of today’s fleets, fleet electrification is understandably a focus for many.
Ensuring a smooth transition to electrification is crucial for any business, and salary sacrifice car benefits schemes have proved a successful means for companies to electrify their fleets, allowing businesses to meet sustainability goals, while ensuring mobility and also offering employee benefits to a wider staff base at the same time.
As Tusker’s car benefit schemes favour Electric Vehicles and Ultra Low Emissions Vehicles, the environmental benefits are immediately obvious for fleets. In offering affordable access to ultra low or electric vehicles, not only do tailpipe emissions fall as business drivers move away from petrol and diesel cars, but it also widens access to EVs to employees who may not have previously been eligible for company schemes, lowering grey fleet emissions at the same time.
Importantly, because Tusker calculates the emissions for every vehicle it provides based on mileage and offsets these using verified carbon offsetting schemes for the lifetime of the contract – even EV drivers benefit from carbon neutrality, as Tusker offsets each electric car on the worst-case assumption of every EV being charged with non-green tariffs. Companies which have introduced a Tusker scheme will have seen their real-world emissions fall considerably across the whole business, as the grey fleet (an often-overlooked area in overall emissions calculations) can drop almost overnight, alongside the emissions of company-registered vehicles.
Another key part of the Tusker benefits package is that as a result of the way in which these schemes are set up, it is not just higher earners that are able to enjoy new cars. 20% taxpayers can take advantage of a car scheme too, which is not always possible on more traditional company car schemes. In fact, a massive 70% of Tusker’s drivers fall into this lower tax bracket, and as Tusker’s research shows the majority of these drivers are coming from vehicles which are more than seven years old, drivers are swapping older, more polluting vehicles for newer, safer and greener vehicles.
With two decades of experience in the fleet market, working for businesses of all sizes from international corporations to SMEs and public sector fleets, Tusker’s expertise ensures that fleet transition is a smooth process for fleet managers, whilst benefitting HR departments and payroll at the same time.
A recent new fleet customer for Tusker, Anglian Water, has not only been able to transition to an EV fleet for its business drivers, but it has also experienced an excellent take up of the scheme from its employees, with 15% of its staff logging ordering a new EV within a month of the scheme’s launch. With applications for vehicles coming from employees of all tax brackets, Anglian Water has been delighted that its EV transition has not only benefitted the environment, but its employees too.
Sally Purbrick, Anglian Water’s head of employee rewards, said: “Anglian Water takes an holistic view of its company benefits and from the outset were keen on the ESR, environmental and sustainability benefits offered by the Tusker scheme.”
“We have been pleased with the engagement, pleased with the uptake and pleased that it is making a genuine difference to our employees’ contribution towards the environment, while contributing to their financial wellbeing,” she added.
In a world where companies need to do more than just offer token gestures towards sustainability, why trust any other company to oversee the introduction of a car benefits scheme for your business?
