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 Economic turmoil with hundreds of thousands of job losses ensuing means fleet decision-makers should ‘tear up’ their existing company car and van policies and focus on SAS-style survival planning with in-built flexibility.
That’s the message from Geoffrey Bray, chairman of Fleet Support Group, Britain’s largest independent fleet management specialist, as the company strives to help customers come to terms with the financial crisis that has engulfed businesses across.
While the company continuously focuses on helping organisations to slash their fleet operating costs, it has now formed a unique Fleet Cost Reduction Steering Group.
The Group, which includes financial advisers from KPMG, legal experts and customers as well as FSG bosses, has been charged with highlighting initiatives that encourage fleet chiefs to ‘think outside the box’ and to implement measures that can be promoted as cost saving against the backdrop of an economy that has not witnessed such turmoil for a generation.
The Group has already held meetings and its ideas will be discussed at a major Fleet Support Group workshop to be held on Thursday, October 16. Anyone interested in attending should contact Debi Reeves at debi.reeves@fsguk.com .
Mr Bray said: “Fleet chiefs should not only analyse the impact of the current economic turmoil on their own businesses, but on the companies with which their employer undertakes business. Any hint of increased exposure to the climate of companies closing or being taken over with job losses resulting must be countered with immediate action.
“Unemployment has been rising for seven consecutive months and at 1.7 million is now the highest it has been for almost a decade. With widespread job losses in certain sectors of business and commerce - notably house building and finance - the number of job losses will escalate.”
With both the TUC and the CBI predicting that total unemployment will rise to more than two million by the end of next year, Mr Bray said: “Many company car policies today bear absolutely no resemblance to the current economic situation. Policies still hark back to the boom years of five or more years ago in many cases.
“Fleet decision-makers must tear up current policy documents and start from scratch and work on survival planning. It is SAS training for fleet operators.
“Fleet managers who continue to plough the same furrow and expect their own employer to be untouched by the credit crunch, job losses and the onset of recession are living in cloud cuckoo land.”
He continued: “A few years ago staff recruitment and retention was the big issue and many companies found themselves having to offer higher quality vehicles than previously to obtain and keep the best employees.
“We now have a completely different business model. For many fleets - depending on individual business circumstances - that may mean wholesale changes to company car policies including longer replacement cycles, the introduction of flexible penalty-free rental and cheaper vehicles. With recruitment frozen in many cases spare cars are unlikely to be reallocated and will therefore become an expensive burden.
“All options must be studied. The UK economy is at the bottom of a very greasy poll and fleet operators must think about the way forward. Retaining the status quo is unlikely to be achievable in the current economic climate. The turmoil requires bold management, which is why we have launched our special ‘fleet cost reduction’ initiative.” |
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