3 Easy Ways to Get Employees to Carpool

One highly effective way to supercharge your company’s commuter program is to encourage more employees to carpool. Sharing rides carries a long list of benefits beyond reducing traffic congestion and environmental impact. It also reduces demand for scarce parking while delivering tangible improvements to employee health and happiness.

The big challenge is to get people to give it a try. To that end, here are three strategies you can use to drum up participation for your employee carpool programs:

Rideshare matching

One big objection that many employees have to carpooling is that they believe it is less convenient than solo driving. This doesn’t have to be the case. We’ve heard countless stories about employees who had no idea they lived so close to one another until they found out through an employer ride matching program.

Employer ride-matching systems should:

  • Help employees discover potential carpool partners within their company network;
  • Offer user-friendly mobile and online tools for managing carpools;
  • Provide decision-support and cost tracking features;
  • Support complementary commuter benefits like guaranteed ride home, subsidies, and rewards.

They’re a great way to drive long-term behavior change!

Parking benefits

Organizations can also offer exclusive parking benefits to employees who share rides. If you charge commuters for parking, you can incentivize employees to try something new by offering discounts to carpoolers, no matter how they find their ride. If you can’t charge for parking right now, another smart strategy is to offer preferred parking spots to carpool vehicles. Other employees will take notice, so this can act as a simple way of promoting your parking benefits program.

Competitions and incentives

Friendly competitions and gamification always get people excited about participating. Rideshare challenges that track standings and offer prizes to winners are a great way to introduce carpooling. Of course, the trick is to get employees to carpool even after the challenge is over.

To that end, we’ve found a few tricks and incentives that work:

  • Allow employees to earn points for every carpool commute and create a commuter store where they can be redeemed
  • Launch a parking cash-out program that provides direct financial benefits to commuters who voluntarily roll back or relinquish their parking privileges
  • Include a guaranteed ride home program so rideshare commuters have emergency transportation

If you’d like to learn more, the RideAmigos team is here to help. Our platform empowers you with programs based on the science of behavioral incentives so you can encourage commuters to use smarter, more sustainable alternatives to driving. Drop us a line to get started.

 

 

0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *