Battery manufacturer Panasonic Energy Belgium has dramatically increased the number of vehicles on its fleet after using LeasePlan to implement a flexible rewards plan.

After deploying its mobility plan, Panasonic Energy Belgium now has 84 cars on its fleet.

The firm currently has 350 employees, including 55 office staff and 295 workers on the shop floor, but previously only ran 10 company cars, provided by LeasePlan, for its director-only fleet.

After deploying its mobility plan, Panasonic Energy Belgium now has 84 cars on its fleet. The flexible benefits or ‘cafeteria plan’ followed a call for the initiative from the workforce.

Jo Paredis, HR manager of the Tessenderlo-based company, explained: “We were asked by a number of employees whether it was possible to have the use of a company car. We responded by incorporating this into a mobility plan, for a number of reasons.

“Our company is located in a business park next to the motorway between Hasselt and Antwerp, which means it’s quite difficult to get here by public transport. And on top of that, the public transport service is not geared to accommodate our shift system. This is the main reason we were facing a ‘mobility problem’. But another reason was of course the fact that a company car continues to enjoy tax benefits.”

Mr Paredis turned to LeasePlan to aid with the set-up of the mobility plan.

“We had good experiences with this leasing company for our directors’ lease cars. But they also came up with the most competitive proposal, so the decision was easy,” he said.

To streamline the solution, Panasonic Energy Belgium decided to join forces with a single dealer and consequently a single manufacturer.

“In short, we decided on the Volkswagen group, which gave us the choice between VW, Audi and Skoda. We opted for Garage Verellen in Geel for practical reasons, as it’s located quite close to our own company.”

Employees are able to choose from 15 models and various options.

Panasonic Energy Belgium added that the implementation of the cafeteria plan went smoothly and the whole procedure took just a year to complete.