Driving for Better Business engages Leeds Entrepreneurs Club on leadership in business.

21 March 2010

A team of Driving for Better Business Champions played a key role in engaging 130 business leaders on the management of employees driving for work.

The Leeds Entrepreneurs Club is a forum for the leading business men and entrepreneurs in Leeds and Yorkshire. Club members meet quarterly to assess the implications for their businesses of developments in the economy. Since its launch in September 2000, the Entrepreneurs’ Club has provided investors and entrepreneurs with new and exciting business ideas and contacts.

The Entrepreneurs’ Club prides itself on being one of Yorkshire’s premier business fora and encourages the entrepreneurial culture, emerging talents and ongoing success within the region. A key function is to provide new and existing members with valuable professional and commercial contacts and services across a range of sectors as well as introductions to both private and institutional sources of funding. It is the brainchild of Lupton Fawcett, one of the the leading commercial law firms in Yorkshire.

Driving for Better Business sponsored the 18 March event in the Ha Ha Bar in Leeds. After a brief period of networking and lunch, the 130 business leaders, covering just about every business sector at managing director level, moved through to a briefing on key market trends and an assessment of the likely economic forecast for the coming 6 months. The club's core activity “ conducting business” then follows on in the format of the well known “Dragons’ Den”.

Mike Parish of Driving for Better Business challenged the meeting to look at the leadership and management implications of how business deals with employees who drive for work. He was supported by a team of 6 Driving for Better Business Champions who were able to field the audience’s questions and explain how they managed employees driving for work. More importantly, the Business Champions were able to spell out the business and direct financial benefits they gained from so doing as well as networking in support of their own business interests. Supporting the Driving for Better Business pitch were Phil Moorhouse, the Managing Director of Northgate Vehicle Leasing, part of the Northgate group, a FTSE 250 company and Europe’s largest vehicle leasing firm; Adrian Kilvington the Managing Director of M&G Vehicle Hire, a Northgate subsidiary; Nick Laister, Managing Director, and Joy Laister, Director of nkl automotive ltd, a Goole based vehicle distribution firm; Noel Critchley, Director YourFleet, a Leeds-based vehicle leasing firm specialising in small businesses; and Chris Charlton, the Risk Manager of CE Electric UK, a power distribution company. From the Public Sector, Cliff Fitzgerald from the City of York Council and John Everson and Marie Brown from North Yorkshire County Council’s 95 Alive were on hand to explain what Local Authorities were doing to engage local businesses about employees driving for work. nkl automotive ltd’s Head of Sales and Marketing, Marc McGarry had also arranged for two Directors from Doncaster College to attend the meeting to explore how they could improve training for 18-24 year olds entering business as future drivers.

Business leaders left the meeting challenged to look that afternoon at how they managed their own employees who drove for work and to identify the financial implications of their current driver management systems.