3 reasons that park sharing is the future of workplace parking

Don’t get stuck in the outdated ‘exclusivity’ trap - your execs want to share their parking spots

When given the chance…

75% of execs share their parking spot with colleagues at least once a week.

97% of employees who've used Parkable to share their allocated park say they wouldn’t go back.

How do we know? Because to celebrate three years in the world of staff parking, we surveyed our clients' staff and dug deep into their park sharing behaviour.

So what’s park sharing?

Park sharing is when employees with an allocated parking spot share their park with colleagues. They might share because they’re on leave, working remotely, or taking another mode of transport into the office that day. When they aren't using their park, other people in the team can.

To get a better sense of how those allocated parkers share, we asked them how they feel about sharing, why they share, and how often. What did we learn? That exclusivity is out - and sharing is in.

The attitude toward sharing is incredibly positive

It’s often seen as a big perk when someone is given an allocated work parking spot that no one else can use - and it is. However, we found that overwhelmingly people want to share, rather than keep a park exclusively to themselves.

• When asked whether they would return to not being able to share their parking spot through the app, 96.9% of people said 'No, I want to share'
• When Parkable was first introduced, 78% of people felt positive about the idea of sharing their parking spot with colleagues from the outset

This is because park sharing is rewarding for the vast majority of people. In fact, when asked how sharing their park with colleagues made them feel, 9 out of 10 respondents said a variation of 'great', 'helpful' and 'kind' - just 9% of people said that it didn't affect how they felt.

“I do some local travel for work so when I am away I make my park available. It feels great to know that colleagues are using it. I know it is a privilege to park right outside the office doors so I like to share this as much as I can.”

- Parkable enterprise employee

People share their park in advance and often

That positive attitude translates to frequent, early sharing. On average across Parkable clients…

• 75% of execs share their allocated park at least once a week
• 18% of allocated parks are shared on any given workday
• 64% of people with an allocated park have shared their park at least once
• 19% of people with an allocated bay have shared at least 50 times

Plus, people are pretty organised about their sharing:

• 46% of shared parks are made available to colleagues over a week in advance
• 9% share over a month in advance
• Someone has even shared their park 56 weeks in advance!

Money makes a difference… but not as much as one would expect

Some companies give their staff a financial incentive for sharing their park with colleagues, while others do not. One question we had was: does that affect how often people share?

Surprisingly, we found that financial incentives make very little difference. Staff at companies which offer a financial incentive for sharing only share their park 1% more than staff at companies with no financial incentive. Which leads to the question...

Why do people want to share?

Generally, it’s simply an act of kindness toward their co-workers.

Of people we surveyed, 69% said that they share their parking spot because it helps their colleagues. Only 37.5% said that a financial incentive would encourage them to share more; for most people, the knowledge that it was helping someone out was all the incentive they needed.

And sharing is certainly perceived as helpful by colleagues using those parks. On average across all clients, 80.8% of shared parks are used every workday.

Let them share their cake

Your employees, including the leaders and execs, are grown ups. Sure, there might be the odd one out who really values the exclusive right to use a car park with their name on it, but by and large, people are kind, social, and it makes them feel good when they’re able to improve someone else’s day.

Want to enable sharing? Learn more or book a chat with our team.