Choosing the right employee parking policy for your organization

Table of contents

1. What is an employee parking policy?
2. Types of employee parking policies
3. First come first served
4. Designated or assigned spaces
5. Mixed approach
6. Employee parking credit
7. Paid employee parking
8. Flexible approach
9. How to find the best employee parking policy
10. Create the ideal employee parking policy

An employee parking policy is a crucial part of day-to-day operations that requires dedicated thoughts and solutions. If parking is a consistent problem in your workplace, with many complaints, a big draw on culture, and a huge drain of resources, choosing an employee parking policy can solve problems before they happen.

Figuring out an effective strategy for your employee parking ahead of time will help your entire organization work better, from employee productivity to cutting and recovering costs.

What is an employee parking policy?

An employee parking policy is your organization’s basic system and process for how employee parking will work at your locations. You can choose this as an across-the-board option wherein all your areas adopt the same idea, or each location has the flexibility to tailor it to their needs.

The primary reason for doing this is to optimize your parking management which will, in turn, make parking better for everyone in your organization. Getting the most out of your employee parking management can help you:

• Increase employee experience and productivity.
• Cut costs and recover costs.
• Improve utilization and fairness.
• Increase employee retention and hiring.
• Streamline management.
• Save admin time and hassle.

Understanding your employee parking policy gives you control and vision over where you go in the future with your parking management.

Types of employee parking policies

First come, first served

Sometimes argued as the fairest approach to all employees, this employee parking policy basically means that those who get to the office earlier than their coworkers will get a spot. This seems like a great option for companies who are aware of office hierarchies and don't want to be involved with them.

This option is great for organizations with many parking stalls, so many that they rarely all fill up. However, even when there are more than enough parking spaces, employers often find that tensions arise among staff. This is because first-come-first-served isn't the most convenient or fair option for everyone. For those who live further from the office, or have families they have to deal with before work, or work a later shift than others, it can feel unfair that early-bird coworkers always get prime spots because they're there first. In contrast, employees with responsibilities don’t get there until later.

Another thing to consider is how this option might affect sustainability for your organization. First-come-first-served leads to the most vehicles being driven of the parking options because employees feel they need more time to have a parking space for sure if they choose to car share.

Designated or assigned spaces

If you've ever been driving around a car park looking for an open spot to find that they all have "reserved" written on their signs, you've seen a designated employee parking policy in real time. This policy says that certain people get certain spots.

This is a good option for companies lacking parking spaces which need to ensure important and key staff can get to work easily. These workplaces use various criteria, from seniority to distance to travel, unique needs, car sharing, and EV users.

This model can be problematic in hybrid workforces where these employees only come into the office a few days a week. What happens to their spot when they’re out of the office? Is someone else free to use it, or does it sit there empty? Hybrid working has posed challenges for designated spaces.

Mixed approach

A mixed approach takes a bit from each previous approach and uses it to create a middle option. They provide designated spaces for key employees (such as senior management), so those people can always come to the office easily. The remaining parking spaces in a company's lot are first-come-first-serve, allowing for fair parking opportunities.

This approach is still affected by many of the same problems as reserved parking because, in a post-covid world, we're working more flexibly, so we need to be parking more flexibly.

Employee parking credit

This is a great way to incentivize not driving to work. Companies give their employees a monthly parking allowance, and they can keep anything they don't spend. This motivates them to find other ways to get to work than driving. This is popular among companies with sustainability goals, few parking spaces, and those who have off-site parking partnerships.

Paid employee parking

Choosing to charge your employees for parking is a growing approach because of its many benefits. Encouraging people to choose not to drive by charging them for parking is an excellent way to reach sustainability goals while significantly impacting the business's bottom line. Turning to paid employee parking policies is also poised to complement a wider move in e-bikes, cycling, and public transport.

Paid employee parking is an excellent cost recovery method for companies by offering employees a way to park at the office but recoup some of that money lost from leasing space.

Although the concept of paid employee parking might initially cause resistance from employees, you can avoid these problems if changes have the correct implementation.

Flexible approach

The flexible approach is all about employees communicating their parking needs and their employers doing their best to meet those. This management was usually done through administration using excel, WhatsApp, Slack, or another organizational spreadsheet to help schedule and manage parking needs.

Now, employee parking management software has made this much easier. The intuitive software monitors who need parking and when and can help automate allocating the space. It's a streamlined hub where parking spaces are no longer confusing but organized and managed by sophisticated software that's easy to use and understand. For example, employees can book slots beforehand, ensuring they have space when needed but keeping everything fair.

The flexible approach can easily encompass all the other types of employee parking policies to create a flexible and tailored system for your use.

How to find the best employee parking policy

Questions to ask

The best way to find the correct solution is to understand the problem. Asking questions will help you narrow down exactly what kind of employee parking policy will work best in your organization's specific case.

You can talk to your team or send out a company-wide survey. Understanding their needs and getting engagement from the beginning of the process will help with change management.

Questions to ask include:

• How many spaces do you have?
• How many employees do you have?
• Do you need visitor access?
• Does your organization have a hybrid working culture?
• What’s the most popular method of transportation to the office?
• Do you need to encourage other types of commuting?
• Are there guaranteed parking spots for some staff? Should there be for them or others?
• Should there be a priority for some staff in a reservation? How do you decide on that?

The answers to these questions will assist you in sketching a broad understanding of your needs so that you can narrow it down to the different employee parking systems you can use.

Use employee parking management software

Parking management software allows for huge flexibility and control so your employees can reserve, share, and access your parking easily. In addition, if you choose a paid employee parking policy, employees can easily pay for parking, simplifying the process and limiting the admin's responsibilities.

Create the ideal employee parking policy

Figuring out your needs and finding an employee parking policy that works well doesn't have to be complicated. Various employee parking methods can simplify your parking situation, no matter how many or how few parking spaces you have.

Parkable’s employee parking management software is the software of choice for companies from meta to the Australian institute of fitness because of the flexibility and control the software gives them and their employees. With a variety of ways to reserve, share, plan, and pay for parking, parkable is taking the stress and complication out of employee parking.

Talk to parkable for more information on how we can help you find the right employee parking policy for you with parking management software.