How to implement carpooling in a company?
In the current context of rising fuel costs, many employees are asking their employers for better reimbursement of their transportation expenses.
Among the various alternative mobility solutions highlighted by Employer Mobility Plans and the Sustainable Mobility Package, carpooling meets the needs of employees who live furthest from their workplace and are poorly served by public transportation.
What are the advantages of carpooling?
Carpooling offers many advantages, both for the employee, for the company, and for society as a whole.
It reduces single-occupancy vehicle use (the practice of driving alone). As a result, this allows the company to reduce the environmental impact of its operations and thus meet its CSR commitments. As a reminder, transportation accounts for 30% of a company's CO2 emissions. Leveraging this factor is therefore an effective way to reduce its carbon footprint.
For employees, carpooling significantly reduces daily commuting costs and improves purchasing power. Encouraging carpooling is therefore also a way to support the purchasing power of your employees.
Among the other HR benefits, carpooling also helps strengthen connections and solidarity among employees. It also improves well-being, health, and quality of life by reducing stress.
Finally, it helps to reduce parking problems, and even to optimize the spaces dedicated to parking.
How to encourage employees to carpool?
The company can play a significant role in encouraging carpooling among its employees. By subscribing to a carpooling service in the company's name and implementing initiatives to promote this mode of transportation, it allows its employees to identify themselves as members of the same company and benefit from advantageous terms of use. In return, the company gains access to carpooling data concerning its employees: number of trips taken, reduction in carbon footprint, etc.
Employer incentives can also take a financial form, either by covering all or part of carpooling costs through the Sustainable Mobility Package (FMD), or by co-financing journeys directly through the carpooling website. Up to €700 per year per employee, tax and social security exempt, can be allocated to finance this mode of transport through the FMD. This amount can now be combined with the employer's contribution to public transport passes, allowing carpooling to also be presented as a complementary mode of transport to public transport or as an alternative, particularly in the event of a strike.
How can we create the optimal conditions to ensure the success of this approach?
The effectiveness of a carpooling service depends on the number of available carpoolers in a given geographic area. To ensure the smooth operation of a carpooling service launched within a company, it is therefore important to create a mass effect by encouraging all willing employees to register simultaneously. Conversely, if registrations are spread out over too long a period, early adopters will be discouraged by the lack of available rides and will abandon the application, resulting in a consistently low number of available rides and the system's limited effectiveness.
Organizing carpooling events to encourage employees to register on the same carpooling website proves particularly effective for getting started. Organizing challenges and user testimonials then help to spread this mode of transportation throughout the company.
Finally, extending the approach to neighboring businesses or to an entire business park increases the mass effect and the number of carpooling opportunities.
How to choose your carpooling app?
To ensure the greatest success of a carpooling incentive initiative, it is important for the company to recommend to its employees the use of a particular application, or even to subscribe to it in order to create a network effect linked to the company.
Several carpooling applications are available on the market. They are characterized by slightly different offers from each other.
Among the important points to consider when making your choice, the following elements should be noted:
- The number of registered users in the geographical area concerned: the more carpoolers already registered, the more possibilities there will be beyond just the company's employees;
- The provision of a monitoring platform for the employer;
- The existence of a "guaranteed return" insurance;
- The cost of the journey;
- The possibility for the company to finance journeys through the FMD directly via the application, which makes the management of the system transparent.
Some applications also offer support for launching the initiative or for ongoing management. Depending on the internal resources available to manage these initiatives, it may be worthwhile to subscribe to this type of contract to ensure the operation's success.
Finally, in some areas, urban areas have entered into specific partnerships with certain applications, allowing companies in these sectors to benefit from preferential, or even free, membership rates.
