Salary Sacrifice is a Key Step in Maximizing Employee Income

As industry leaders call for employers to help their workers meet the burden of the increased cost of living, Midlands-based leasing firm Fleet Evolution is urging fleets, including SMEs, to maximize their employees’ income when it comes to one of the highest areas of expense: motoring by utilising salary sacrifice.

Fleet Evolution is a specialist in salary sacrifice schemes, in particular for cars, and says such schemes, which are cost-neutral for the company to provide, are typically saving employees around a third on motoring costs – vital savings in the current economic climate.

The company’s work to promote the cost-saving benefits of salary sacrifice comes as Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust highlight an employer’s obligation to ‘do all they can’ to help employees through these difficult periods. Speaking at a recent event, the Trust advocated schemes ranging from employee assistance programmes to no-cost salary initiatives.

Fleet Evolution noticed a growing trend to help maximise employee income in the early stages of the downturn when they entered the car salary sacrifice market. Now they only provide salary sacrifice and work with customers employing as little as 19 or as many as 2,400 employees..

Director Andrew Leech explains, ‘It’s not just employees feeling the financial pinch at the moment, it’s the employer too and often the employer wants to do all they can to maximise their employee’s income but struggle to find a way to achieve this. Salary sacrifice has been used to fund everything from pensions to mountain bikes but the car is seldom considered, perhaps because of the lack of providers or because of the perceived complexity of such schemes.

In practice salary sacrifice cars we would suggest should be the first area an employer looks at, whereas other arrangements such as childcare and bikes have limited benefit with only a few employees gaining any advantage the majority of employees usually use cars, of course, the added benefit is newer cars are more reliable, less polluting and generally improve productivity within the workforce.’

Fleet Evolution offer advice on other salary sacrifice areas but cars remain their speciality as Andrew Leech explains, ‘No other benefit area is more visible or potentially more beneficial to employee than cars, whether it’s a small family car for a fixed monthly amount that won’t change or an alternative to the cash taker in the executive saloon the rewards are clear. We think employers want to do all they can to maximise their employee’s salary, the only thing lacking is the awareness and perhaps the readiness of suppliers. We work with any company from 20 employees to open up this benefit area to more employers on a cost-neutral low-risk basis and with a take-up of 10% year one, the scheme delivers!

Fleet Evolution is a salary sacrifice car specialist, for more information contact Fleet Evolution on marketing@fleetevolution.com