INTRODUCTION
Work is changing. Employee driving needs to keep pace.
Every day, employees get behind the wheel for work. They visit customers, stock shelves, check on job sites, and keep products moving. Their work connects businesses to the people and places they serve.
Yet the programs behind all that driving often reflect a different era of work.
In 2026, the pressures to rethink those programs came into sharper focus. Consolidation reshaped teams and territories. Employee expectations brought flexibility and fairness into the conversation. And organizations faced steady pressure to control costs, support productivity, and reduce risk.
Looking ahead to 2027, Motus experts share six predictions for how these pressures will reshape employee driving—and why they deserve a place in the broader conversation about business performance, people, and growth.
Here’s what they see coming, and what you can do now to get ready.
Mile Marker 1
Employee driving moves onto the leadership agenda
Mile Marker 2
The company car will have to earn its place
Mile Marker 3
The job of driving for work gets harder
Mile Marker 4
Employees will want a say in what they drive for work
Mile Marker 5
Driver risk earns a bigger place in the business conversation
Mile Marker 6
Capturing mileage won’t be enough. Leaders will expect business answers
Mile Marker 1
Business critical
Employee driving moves onto the leadership agenda
In 2027, more leaders will examine employee driving as part of how their business performs.
Employee driving connects decisions across finance, HR, operations, sales, and risk. A change in territory can affect driving time. A vehicle policy can affect employee satisfaction. A decision made to reduce one expense can create work or costs elsewhere.
When those decisions happen separately, it becomes harder to see their combined effect on the business. And in many organizations, the program still runs on a policy set years ago and rarely revisited.
In 2027, more leaders will look at employee driving as a whole: with a clear owner, shared goals, and a view of how each decision affects the rest of the business.
Signal to watch
Employee driving shows up in budget planning as its own line item, not buried inside travel and expense.
Once a reimbursement program is set up with finance, HR, and sales goals, it tends to run on its own. Nobody really manages it after that. That has to change.
Jake Ernest
Director of Fleet Strategy, Motus
Mile Marker 2
The company car
The company car will have to earn its place
In 2027, more companies will reconsider whether long-standing vehicle decisions still fit the work.
For a long time, offering a company car was a default decision. Today, finance teams are asking why the business is paying for, insuring, and managing vehicles that see plenty of personal use off business hours. Those miles still carry cost and liability for the company. So the question is shifting from “Should we offer company cars?” to “Who actually needs one?” Company cars remain the right fit for roles that require a specialty vehicle, like an upfitted van or a truck that hauls equipment, while many everyday drivers may be better served by reimbursement for the business use of a personal vehicle.
In 2027, more companies will bring HR, sales, and finance to the same table to rewrite their driving policies. Many will evaluate which driver groups should move from company cars to personal vehicle reimbursement. The difference now is that instead of one blanket policy set years ago, the decision will be deliberate and made role by role.
Signal to watch
Employees ask to drive their own vehicles, or start treating the company car as a trade-off instead of a perk.
Just because a company has always offered a company car doesn’t mean it still needs to. The question is whether the role still requires one.
Valerie Myer
Sr. Director, Strategic Account Management, Motus
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Mile Marker 3
Life in the field
The job of driving for work gets harder
In 2027, employers will face growing pressure to account for the time and attention that driving requires.
For field employees, the workday isn’t just the appointments. It’s also everything in between: getting to the next stop, navigating traffic, adjusting to changing schedules, and keeping up with admin. As territories grow and responsibilities expand, often through consolidation, that time gets harder to absorb.
That’s changing how companies measure success in the field. For years, more stops meant more sales. Now more leaders are asking what those stops actually produce, and what it takes to get to each one. They’re looking at the whole day, from the time it takes to reach each stop to how productive the stop itself is, and asking whether expectations reflect the realities of a day on the road.
In 2027, driving time will become a bigger part of conversations about workload, territory design, and employee well-being. Asking employees to be more productive will also mean examining what gets in their way.
Signal to watch
Field teams raise concerns about travel time, admin work, and having enough time with customers.
Where there used to be three reps in a store, now there’s one. As responsibilities grow, we have to account for driving and admin time when we set expectations for a realistic workday.
Valerie Myer
Sr. Director, Strategic Account Management, Motus
Mile Marker 4
Fairness
Employees will want a say in what they drive for work
In 2027, employees will judge how they’re supported on the road the same way they judge the rest of the job.
For decades, a company car was easy to position as an employee perk. But as younger generations make up more of the workforce, that assumption is changing. Employees increasingly value flexibility, transparency, and fairness — and having a company-owned vehicle in the driveway may not carry the same appeal it once did.
That shift will push employers to rethink the role vehicle programs play in the employee experience. Instead of asking who qualifies for a company car, more organizations will ask what approach fits the employee, the job, and how that person actually drives. For some roles, that’s still a company vehicle. For others, it’s a vehicle they choose, with reimbursement that covers the cost of business driving.
In 2027, the strongest programs won’t treat the vehicle itself as the benefit. They’ll focus on what employees value most: choice, fairness, and a clear understanding of how they’re supported when they drive for work.
Signal to watch
Drivers start asking how their reimbursement is calculated, and why it differs from a colleague’s.
Fairness doesn’t mean giving everyone the same thing. It means accounting for where employees drive, what the job requires, and what that driving costs them.
Jake Ernest
Director of Fleet Strategy, Motus
Mile Marker 5
Risk
Driver risk earns a bigger place in the business conversation
In 2027, more organizations will examine the exposure created by everyday driving for work.
Commercial auto insurance rates have climbed for more than a decade, and the cost of claims keeps rising with them. For employers, a single crash involving an employee can be one of the most expensive incidents of the year.
Field employees often balance driving with a full schedule of calls, messages, and stops. Yet driver safety training is often a one-time event, covered during onboarding or in a long annual course that’s quickly forgotten. Short, recurring lessons fit more easily into a busy week and reinforce safer habits throughout the year.
In 2027, more companies will treat driver risk as an ongoing practice instead of an annual check. That means year-round insurance monitoring, continuous MVR monitoring, and safety training that builds better habits over time.
Signal to watch
Insurance renewals come in higher again, or a license or coverage issue surfaces only after an incident.
Accident and insurance costs have gone up year after year. The one prediction I wouldn’t make is that they’ll stabilize.
Jake Ernest
Director of Fleet Strategy, Motus
Mile Marker 6
Data
Capturing mileage won’t be enough. Leaders will expect business answers.
In 2027, the value of driving data will come from what it helps the business decide.
Most organizations already have data about employee driving, but it’s often scattered across systems and teams. The opportunity now is to turn that information into answers: where costs can be better managed, where resources may be underutilized, where risk is emerging, and how driving supports the work employees are actually doing.
As businesses look for better returns from their resources, we expect the questions to become more specific. Are we using the right approach for different driving populations? Are routes and territories set up to support customers and the business? Are company vehicles being fully utilized? Are reimbursement costs aligned with how people actually drive?
Answering those questions requires teams to connect perspectives that have traditionally lived in different places. Finance may see spending. Sales and operations may see customer coverage and field productivity. HR may see employee feedback. Risk may see exposure. Together, those perspectives create a clearer picture of how employee driving is performing and a clearer connection between driving decisions and the outcomes the business wants to achieve.
Signal to watch
Program reviews are moving past expense reports to ask whether the driving program is delivering business results.
Data takes the emotion out of the conversation. Let the data shape the policy and enforce it, and you’ll get the savings, the efficiency, and the visibility you’re looking for.
Valerie Myer
Sr. Director, Strategic Account Management, Motus
What’s next
Get your employee driving program ready for 2027
These predictions come from what our experts see in the field every day. Talk with a Motus expert about where your program stands today and what to prioritize next year.