Fleet News Award winner: Fleet of the Year, 501-1,000 vehicles - Lafarge

Safety and driver communications are two areas where Lafarge excels within its fleet operation – and two key reasons why it collected the Fleet News award for Fleet of the Year in the 501–1,000 vehicle category.

New initiatives have seen an impressive reduction in accident rates and overall costs, while a new online driver portal is providing employees with a more user-friendly way of understanding their company car costs and duty- of-care responsibilities.

“Lafarge is obsessed with safety. It’s our number one priority and it’s the culture of the business – people genuinely believe it,” says strategic sourcing manager Mark Giannasi.

The company’s Zero Harm policy permeates throughout Lafarge but cost cutting is not the main driver.

Rebecca Chivers, UK car fleet adviser, explains: “Our objective is to protect our staff who are driving on company business; reducing cost is a by-product.

"Once the initial programme is done and the training has taken place, the company culture takes over.”

The safety programme is just one of a number of changes the Lafarge fleet team has implemented in recent years. However, everything is done with one eye firmly focused on improving safety and communications.

Fleet News: You took the decision three years ago to move from a multi-funder approach to a sole partner – GE Capital. Why does this work best for Lafarge?

Rebecca Chivers: Having one provider is easier for administration and day-to-day contact. Communication with the drivers is a key area of the relationship.

Mark Giannasi: The dilemma was the ease of administration and the premium you pay versus multi-source quotes. But we have an open pricing model with GE that gives us certainty on cost.

We also do a lot with GE on cost reduction activities, for example on accidents, which would be more difficult with several providers.

FN: Where does the driver sit in terms of the overall fleet policy? Is their satisfaction a key consideration?

MG: Helping drivers to understand the implications of what they are choosing over four years is important, especially with the changes to benefit-in-kind tax.

But you have to find the right balance on the level of information to give them.
We developed a driver portal where the key messages are delivered.

We have turned a 20-page dry driver document into five things drivers need to be aware of. It’s more useable and more likely to be used.

We also provide drivers with details of the BIK tax costs for all the future years so employees can see the costs during their time with the car. It prevents shocks.

RC: Our driver survey found that employees didn’t realise tax increases each year with the BIK changes, so our ongoing communication with them is increasing their understanding.
 

FN: How important are wholelife costings when setting your fleet choice lists?

MG: Most fleets use wholelife costs but they don’t manage the fleet by wholelife costs.

We are looking at how we do that, for example, how we incentivise drivers to save us money.

It’s about looking at the wholelife cost during the life of the vehicle and asking ‘is it costing us what we think it will on maintenance, accidents, fuel economy, etc’.

Here the lease cost ends up being only half of the wholelife cost.

We have made changes as a result of using wholelife costs.

We used AFRs for the choice list but changed it to 80% of combined mpg as a real-world figure with the fuel price based on the pump price .

That allows us to reduce thresholds and improve our wholelife costs.

FN: You have a low average CO2 of around 132g/km. How has this been achieved?

MG: We focus on the tax bill but also the correlation with low CO2 and high mpg keeps it in check. We ask our drivers whether BIK and mpg is important and from that we cap the list.

Our cap varies from 130g/km to 180g/km depending on the category . We’ve been reducing the caps every year.

It’s the BIK and mpg that is driving us down this route more than the legislation changes.

RC: In each individual category we have a ‘green list’ where we highlight the lower CO2 models to make it more obvious for drivers.

The bulk of our drivers are capped at 140g/km and we will drop this further, probably to 130g/km next.

FN: As a manufacturer of building materials, Lafarge is focused on safety and duty of care. How does this cascade down to the fleet?

RC: Our biggest thing is safety. We put risk assessments in place two years ago using 2009 as the data point for accident management benchmarking.

MG: We were in the middle of a downturn and we wanted a large amount of cash to fund the programme. We took the approach that our spend on training would reduce accident costs.

We spread the cost into the lease rate with GE so it became a couple of extra pounds per month on each car rather than a big upfront cost.

This removed the cost barrier so we could focus on the duty-of-care plan.

The programme has resulted in a fall in the number of accidents by more than a third and also a reduction in the cost of accidents by almost 50%, which is due to reduced severity.

We took the 80/20 rule: the riskiest 20% have one-to-one training; the other 80% undertake an e-learning course.
 

We are looking at extending the programme to our non-company car drivers and our grey fleet.

We have no cash allowances but we do have people who use hire cars or are commuting. The next step is to put them through the risk assessment.

FN: Why don’t you offer cash as an option?

MG: The grey fleet is a can of worms – it’s hard to manage and takes a lot of resource. Lafarge has taken the approach to not mess around with it; instead we just have company cars.

We offer a good choice and drivers are happy with that. Giving people a cash option is a lazy way to do it.

The safety culture is an ethos that flows down from the top.

It includes programmes such as Lafarge’s Visible Felt leadership where managers talk about safety with employees.

Conversations focus on topics such as how to travel from A to B in the safest manner, talking about the journeys and encouraging staff to think about how they can drive more safely.

The safety strategy will be one of constant regeneration for Lafarge.

Every two to three years it intends to recycle the plan to keep it fresh and relevant for drivers.

Was the initial investment worth it? “Definitely,” replies Giannasi.

“Our original claim was that the programme would pay for itself within six months and this is what we’ve seen.”

He adds: “You can do as little or as much as you want. But we want to improve everything: for drivers, for cost, for safety and for the environment.”