Managing the risks of grey fleet drivers

Is your grey fleet compliant?

You could be putting your business at serious risk of financial penalties if you don’t have an effective fleet management policy in place for your grey fleet, as well as your company car fleet.

Not only does it mean you might be paying over the odds when it comes to reimbursing business mileage, but you could also be exposing the company to substantial financial penalties if your grey fleet drivers are involved in an incident without the company having done the proper due diligence to ensure the driver – and car – is fit for purpose.

Corparison can help your company to not only create an effective and efficient grey fleet policy but can also help you transition away from traditional grey fleet – saving you time and money.

What is a grey fleet?

A grey fleet vehicle is any vehicle that’s driven for business purposes.

Not only does this include company cars or cars that employees have bought with a cash allowance, but any vehicle driven on business mileage – including an employee’s own car.

It means that your grey fleet could potentially be much larger than you might have anticipated or planned for, because it can often be easier – and more cost-effective – to allow any employee to use their personal vehicle for a business trip than it is to manage a whole fleet of company cars.

However, not managing your grey fleet and letting it run by itself can have serious consequences.

What is the risk of poor grey fleet management on my business?

Grey fleet has different time and cost implications than operating a regular fleet.

It can be difficult to accurately track the business mileage an employee is doing in their own car to reimburse them the fuel used on these trips, and there is the potential that you could end up overpaying.

But more than the admin headache involved with paying for fuel, another threat posed by an unmanaged grey fleet is that you could be held liable for any collisions or vehicle damage a grey fleet driver is involved in.

Ultimately, this could mean that you, as the employer, could end up paying out more than if you had a robust policy in place to begin with.

As Paula, Head of Corporate Mobility at Corparison notes, you have a duty of care over your employees, even when driving in their own car for a work trip. It can be easy for this to fly under the radar in the face of everything else you have to deal with, which can often be more pressing or have a more immediate impact on business.

It’s easy enough to allow your employees to just hop in their car and head off without checking the standard of their vehicle, whether it’s been well-maintained, or even if your driver has a clean licence.

Grey fleet can also reflect badly on your business based purely on the vehicle the driver has chosen.

If you’re giving your employees a car cash allowance without stipulating the conditions the car must be in – for example, under five years old or with a certain amount of miles on the clock, you’re not in control of what your employees are driving.

Before you know it, your drivers are turning up to client meetings in a battered old diesel and this might not be the impression you want to make – especially if you have sustainability goals to try and hit.

Putting a grey fleet management policy in place or transitioning your grey fleet drivers into electric salary sacrifice cars can go a long way in improving those first impressions, keeping your drivers safer on the roads and mitigating the chances of your company having to pay out thousands of pounds in unexpected costs.

What are the benefits of grey fleet management?

According to Paula, ‘If a company has not checked their grey fleet or done any due diligence in making sure drivers have valid licences and insurance, and that their car is in good condition, how do they know that the employee’s car is fit for purpose, or that the driver themselves is fit for purpose?’

If you haven’t checked your grey fleet and you have a driver who is involved in a serious collision, this could come back to your company, and – depending on the nature of the incident – can result in something like a corporate manslaughter case that has the potential to cost millions.

This is probably money your business does not have – and doesn’t want to spend on something that can be so easily mitigated.

What can I do?

One of the first steps you can take is talking to Corparison about your grey fleet.

There’s nothing worth knowing about grey fleet that our experts don’t know, and they’ll be able to help you build a robust grey fleet policy that protects both you and your employees.

We can also help you to transition away from grey fleet and turn your cash allowance drivers into salary sacrifice drivers.

Our electric salary sacrifice scheme is an enticing employee benefit (that doesn’t cost your business any extra) that can help pull many of your grey fleet drivers into new, electric vehicles.

This has a multitude of benefits for your business.

Not only does it help with employee retention, but it also helps to improve your company’s green credentials by having more of your employees drive EVs. And on top of that, it helps with your duty of care.

If your cash allowance drivers become electric salary sacrifice drivers, it means they’ll be driving brand-new electric cars. These are safer because they’re new, but they’re also safer because they go through vigorous testing and come equipped with all the latest safety aids.

And the reality is, if your cash allowance drivers want an electric car lease, Corparison can supply a cost-effective salary sacrifice deal – a bonus for them, and a bonus for you.