The operating environment for LeasePlan is still in a flux and ground is shifting continuously. We have our strategy, plans and priorities, but we realize that we need to respond and adapt to the flux quickly. Our total rewards strategy, therefore, is both a means and an end, to business success. We use it as a KPI of business performance as well as a change agent to align employees to changed business priorities, quite effectively.

In order to meet expectations of employees and to enable us to attract and engage talent, we tailor our rewards programs to appeal to different employee segments. Flexibility and freedom of choice are powerful value propositions that we offer to our employees within the overall corporate governance framework and ofcourse, the purse. While we realize that it is not possible to satisfy every employee, we do believe that the principle of having ‘right- rewards- for-the- right- reasons-for-the-right-people’ is taking us towards the balance that we would like to increasingly achieve.

A wishful thought, at this point, would be to deploy a greater part of the rewards program in driving longer term business imperatives that build on intrinsic strengths rather than deploying it in fixing immediate challenges of motivation and retention of talent. This would mean looking at several other related issues even beyond HR, perhaps, and mobilize the management team’s mindshare and timeshare on that in 2012.

The focus is changing from compensation strategy to total rewards strategy. Not just for LeasePlan but for the entire corporate world. One of the key objectives of any total rewards program is to provide the business with the competitive advantage within the industry, apart from the ‘employee attract and engage’ objectives. Our product offering is an end-to-end car leasing and fleet management solution for corporates, which is relevant, attractive-to-employees-and-employers and a robust element of any compensation and reward program. By providing company cars as perquisites to senior management and as tool-for-trade to their sales and service teams and by outsourcing the acquisition and management of this fleet across its life cycle to LeasePlan, companies derive several operational and monetary efficiencies in the finance, risk, administration and people engagement KRAs of their business. We also offer end-to-end leasing and management solutions to corporates for their business vehicles thereby, allowing them to focus on their core performance KPIs.

With regards to pricing, we base it on the estimated market value of the vehicle at the end of the lease period.

LeasePlan is the market leader in India. Our key competitors include ALD Automotives and Arval,; which are present globally. This is a niche industry and in India, it is still very nascent with excellent potential.