Managing Corporate Fleet through Carsharing

Photo: Courtesy of Telia Eesti 

Telia Eesti is Estonia’s leading IT and telecommunications company, with a mission to further the development of society and make Estonia a better place to live and work. As a company, Telia Eesti is committed to using technology to make people’s lives – including their 1600 employees – easier and more convenient.

This is why their Daring Goals 2030 include:

  • Zero CO2 throughout their value chain
  • Zero Waste: circular economy business model
  • 100% Action through team effort for all people of Telia Eesti (employees, partners and, hopefully, customers)

The organization has laid out very concrete and clear plans to achieve their 2030 goals and, according to Mari-Liis Vihul, head of the administrative department at Telia Eesti, in 5 years, their vehicle fleet will be CO2-free.

How will they achieve that? Mari-Liis elaborates:

“We have agreed that, from now on, we buy only electric cars – no hybrids, no fossils – only electric. For charging EVs, we’ll use only green energy – wind and water. Also, we share our fleet with all Telia employees – even for private use, so you don’t need to have your own.”

“We’ll supplement it by using only electric taxis and a differenced personal car compensation system as of 2025. This means that, as an employee, if you drive a fossil car, you’ll get less commute compensation than the ones who drive electric cars.”

Employee Carsharing – “Pool car system”

Telia Eesti’s corporate fleet consists of approximately 150 vehicles across Estonia, and 10 of them are used today for carsharing.

“We call them ‘pool cars’,” Mari-Liis explains, “this means that everybody can book a car from the office and use it for their personal needs. That also helps us get rid of cars that are not used frequently.”

“Employees can only use N1 category cars – which are light vehicles – and as long as they fill out their business-vs-private logbook, the Estonian tax benefit system supports this, at the moment, acting this way only with N1 cars.”

Although the frequency of car use has dropped significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the stay-at-home orders, but even under those circumstances Telia’s shared fleet collected 968 bookings and drove 110,043 km in a 5-month period.

Here are some quick usage stats for Telia Eesti carsharing from January 2021 to May 2021.

  • Cars available to book: 10
  • Bookings: 968
  • Number of trips: 4032
  • Number of booked hours: 12 934
  • Total km: 110 043

Telia Eesti Carsharing Usage Chart by Fleet Complete: Jan 1, 2021 – May 31, 2021 Period

 

How does Telia use Fleet Complete’s Carsharing solution?

The concept of car sharing is not new, and Telia has been doing corporate car sharing for the past 10 years. What is new is the use of technology to simplify the process of booking administration, use differentiation, and keyless car entry.

“In the last eight months,” Mari-Liis clarifies, “we have updated the whole carsharing system on an organizational level. Today, we synchronize Telia’s active directory information with Fleet Complete platform to enable login with Telia account for employees.”

Employees download the Fleet Complete Carsharing app and use it to:

  • Book a car
  • Open car doors with the app
  • Drive
  • Annotate business or personal use in the automated logbook

“Every week, employees who have used the cars get a message to look over their last week’s driving trips and mark if they were for private use or for business.”

“At the end of the month, data from Fleet Complete is sent to Telia’s payroll, and the costs for private trips are deducted from the employee salaries. Similarly, company car usage costs come to managers so that they can check if those are correct.”

Why is corporate carsharing good for the company?

Telia Eesti corporate car with employees looking into the interior salon.

Photo: Courtesy of Telia Eesti 

  • Carsharing helps optimize costs through more efficient use.
  • Car decals act as brand advertisement while driving through city streets.
  • Gives employees opportunity to test out electric cars.

“It’s good for the employees as it gives them the possibility to really try a new type of cars – as the electric cars are really new today on the market – and a lot of people haven’t tried them before. It also lets them get used to the charging systems.”

“Another plus side,” adds Mari-Liis, “if you live in the city center, then you can give up having your own car because you know you can always book one from the office.”

“So it’s really good for the company, it’s great for the employees, and it’s good for the environment.”

How do Telia employees feel about the new Carsharing system?

“The new system has been implemented about 8 months ago during the COVID-19 pandemic, so due to office closures, only 15% of employees, or 240 users, have had a chance to try it – and they rate it as really good.”

“We’re working with the Fleet Complete team every day to finetune the system, and I’m more than sure that in a couple of months it will be perfect.”