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Improve Organizational Resilience with Smarter Commuting

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What is organizational resilience?

Organizational resilience is a critical concept for businesses, especially mid-size to large companies with sizable workforces. It is defined as an organization’s ability to continue functioning at a high level in the face of sudden, unexpected disruptions and gradual changes. Strategic planning experts emphasize the importance of organizational resilience as a critical component of a sound business continuity plan.

While organizational resilience planning can cover dramatic, high-profile disruptive events like natural disasters, extreme weather, terrorist attacks, and military assaults, its everyday applications are far more mundane. Businesses seek to address common problems like severe traffic congestion, unexpected interruptions to public transit service, accidents, and road closures.

Such occurrences tend to have a shorter-term but still financially significant impact on a company’s operations. As such, businesses seek to improve their resilience to insulate themselves from the financial losses caused by disruptions. Sound organizational resilience plans feature four central components:

  • Anticipation. Strategic planners assess the various short-term, medium-term, and long-term possibilities when considering the different scenarios that could cause enough disruption to negatively impact business activities.
  • Preparation. Companies form and implement contingency plans that address each of the major potential problems identified in the previous step. They also make sure that all management-level staff knows about these contingency plans and can access them on short notice.
  • Response. This aspect of the strategy defines the decisive action the company takes to execute its contingency plans. Response elements focus on restoring the organization to acceptable levels of output and productivity as quickly as possible.
  • Adaptation. If the disruptive event forces sustained or permanent changes to organizational operation, adaptation plans anticipate the new future landscape while addressing shortcomings with the added benefits of experience and hindsight.

Smart commuting tools improve organizational resilience by preparing you for the unexpected.

One important way to improve organizational resilience is to arm commuters with tools that help them overcome disruptions like inclement weather, transit strikes and service interruptions, construction, and temporary road closures. Common scenarios include things like:

  • Problems with train tracks, signals, or other infrastructure that temporarily slows or disables light rail trains, subways, or buses
  • Heavy rain or snowfall that causes treacherous driving conditions
  • Lane or road closures on major thoroughfares during construction season

Here’s a look at a few specific commuter management strategies that support higher levels of organizational resilience:

  • Telecommuting. One of the best ways to overcome disruptions that prevent people from getting to work is to have them work from home instead! Telework commuter services keep employees productive no matter what the weather or local traffic conditions, all while delivering a more beneficial work-life balance that increases job satisfaction.
  • Encouraging carpooling. Creating a ridesharing culture in your company encourages people to be less dependent on solo driving. Companies with a high percentage of solo-drive commuters are more susceptible to the problems caused by sudden disruptions. Corporate carpool programs can help: they get people traveling in groups, helping them reach the work site in larger numbers during periods of disruption.
  • Vanpools. This effective solution is an excellent workaround for the so-called “last mile” dilemma. Operating a vanpool shuttle between your work site and a major local transit hub allows people to easily use public transportation as an alternative to driving. This can neutralize problems like road closures and severe congestion, giving commuters a point-to-point option that allows them to bypass road problems using subways or overground rail transit.

Giving commuters the ability to take such interruptions in stride and source alternative modes of transportation without missing a beat is critical, and it’s one of the key value propositions offered by the RideAmigos commuter management hub.

The RideAmigos platform has been adopted by numerous businesses and agencies around the world to help improve organizational resilience while reducing their carbon footprints. Get started today and empower your employees to respond to challenges with agility and efficiency.

5 Best Benefits To Provide Commuters

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Encourage employees to commute smarter by providing first-class benefits

Benefits and support programs are a great way to get employees and staff to ditch their single-occupancy vehicles and skip the solo drive. The best such programs all have one key thing in common: they remove the obstacles that prevent people from choosing alternative modes of transportation.

The RideAmigos team put our heads together and assembled this list of  five top-notch suggestions to help you create happier, healthier, more efficient commuters:

Guaranteed Rides Home

Some people balk at the idea of walking or biking to work because they’re worried about being stranded in the event of inclement weather. Guaranteed ride home programs provide a way around that problem. They ensure participants can get home safely and comfortably no matter what Mother Nature might throw their way.

Check out our blog post on guaranteed ride home programs for ideas and specifics.

Showers and storage

A lot of people don’t choose more active forms of transportation, like biking, because they don’t want to arrive at work hot and sweaty. Or they worry about where to keep their bicycle and personal items. Adding shower facilities, secure bike storage, and lockers for employee use is the perfect antidote.

Financial Incentives

Businesses and organizations can offer financial incentives to team members who make regular use of alternative transportation. Every time someone opts not to use a single-occupancy vehicle, they can rack up credits towards prizes like cash, gift cards, meals at local restaurants, event tickets, new bicycles … the possibilities are limited only by your imagination and budget!

Investments like this can also generate positive financial returns. A workforce that commutes by bike might qualify for lower health insurance premiums. Or, you could reduce your parking requirements. Which would, in turn, save money on leased lots. Or you could even generate additional revenue by renting out unused owned spaces to other tenants.

Free or Subsidized Transportation

Along the same lines, one of the leading reasons people stick with single-occupancy vehicles is that they’re worried about the costs of alternatives. Providing free or subsidized options can tip the scales and easily motivate change.

Try these ideas:

  • Provide free or subsidized public transit passes, tokens, or journey credits
  • Offer financial assistance for bike-share and car-share membership programs
  • Partner with ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft to offer door-to-door service from home to work

Benefits like these can be easily integrated alongside advanced trip tracking. Contact us to learn how.

Commute management software

Software like the RideAmigos platform puts powerful tools in the hands of commuters. Tools like comprehensive multi-modal trip planners, ridesharing, bikepooling, and automatic trip logging. We provide technological solutions that make it easy for employers to implement new benefits and easy for employees to make smarter transportation choices and skip the solo drive.

Sign up for our Commuter Tips email list for more smart commuting ideas and TDM strategies.

3 Impressive Executives Leading the Way to Smarter Commuting

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Join these high-profile organizational leaders in inspiring people to change how they commute

Leading by example is one of the most effective ways to encourage organizational change. An increasing number of executives are doing exactly that when it comes to smarter commuting. Here’s a look at three people in leadership positions who are choosing enjoyable, environmentally friendly ways of getting to work:

Alan Elser
CFO, GM Nameplate

Despite a notoriously rainy climate, a growing number of Seattle commuters are choosing to bike to work throughout the year. Among them is Alan Elser, the chief financial officer of GM Nameplate, a leading supplier of custom-manufactured industrial goods
In 2013, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported that Elser bikes to work three times a week. The 24-mile journey between GM Nameplate’s Seattle headquarters and his May Valley-area home is undaunting for Elser. “Riding in in the morning is a great way to wake up and plan your day,” Elser said in an interview. “Riding home is a chance to decompress.”

Jennifer Welch
Managing Deputy Commissioner,
Chicago Department of Family and Support Services

She may have a much shorter commute than Elser, but Jennifer Welch bikes to work and back all year round, despite during Chicago’s notoriously cold and snowy winters. Her four-mile commute takes her from Logan Square toward the center of the city. Even when Chicago was hammered by the “Snowmaggedon” blizzard in the winter of 2011, Welch bundled up and biked to her job at the Department of Family and Support Services. Even more, her blizzard bike commute included a trip to the city’s 911 center to attend to a staffing emergency.

Christopher Eisgruber
President, Princeton University

The Princeton University president has emerged as a strong voice in the local call for better biking infrastructure. Traffic congestion makes cycling to Princeton’s campus challenging. But, thanks to a vocal advocacy campaign, the city of Princeton seems to be moving towards becoming more bike-friendly. Eisgruber says he cycles to work as often as possible, and hopes that the city will do its part to encourage others to join him.

RideAmigos salutes these and the many other business, education and government leaders who are leaving their cars behind more often. If you’re part of an organization that’s committed to helping commuters make smarter choices, be sure to check out our comprehensive TDM software toolkit. We deliver powerful solutions for ridesharing, trip planning, incentives, and data analysis.  Transforming how your organization commutes can have a major positive impact on your bottom line. Contact us to schedule your personal demonstration.

The Benefits of a Guaranteed Ride Home

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What is a Guaranteed Ride Home program?

Imagine these scenarios: an employee who commutes by bike is about to head home when an unexpected thunderstorm hits. Or, a public transit commuter has to suddenly rush home to pick up a sick child from school. A Guaranteed Ride Home program comes through by providing quick, reliable transportation when it’s needed most.

A Guaranteed Ride Home program (sometimes called an Emergency Ride Home program) is a common feature of workplaces that encourage commuters to use means other than than single occupant vehicles. While the specifics of each program vary from company to company, they generally follow this type of structure:

  • The program is open to employees that regularly use alternative means of transportation during their commutes
  • “Alternative means of transportation” can include cycling, walking, public transit or any other approved mode
  • Employees that use these modes for commuting at least two to three times per week qualify for the program
  • Qualified employees can get a free ride home a specified number of times per year if an emergency situation arises

Guaranteed Ride Home programs encourage alternative transportation use

The key benefit of setting up an Emergency/Guaranteed Ride Home program is that it makes it commuters more likely to use alternative transportation. If people know they have a reliable ride home in an emergency, they’re more likely to skip the solo drive.

The RideAmigos platform offers extensive technical support to workplace managers who want to create Guaranteed Ride Home programs. Creating and managing such a program is quick and easy, thanks to our comprehensive toolkit.

Here’s an example of how simple it is to set up and manage a ride home program using RideAmigos:

  • Create a specific private network that will be limited to employees who are eligible to participate in the program.
  • Attach any necessary descriptions to each user in the system, or send a message to qualified users to let them know they’re in the program.
  • Use the platform’s survey tool to collect information from participants, as needed.
  • Add new members manually, or by sending “join us” links to qualified employees.
  • Create a points program to manage the redemption of rides by employees who qualify.
  • Add the ride home vouchers as inventory items; they will be managed and distributed automatically by the platform.

You can view more details and specifics by visiting the RideAmigos Academy help page on Guaranteed Ride Home programs.

Overcoming Congestion By Empowering Commuters

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All too often, conventional approaches to fighting traffic congestion amount to little more than wasted taxpayer money.

To the growing frustration of many taxpayers, municipalities and government agencies around the country are throwing money at inefficient ways to relieve the ever-present problem of traffic congestion. Consider the following examples:

  • Colorado’s state government recently proposed a $1.2 billion plan to widen the I-70 freeway in Denver
  • The city of Louisville, Kentucky is bankrolling the expansion of the I-71 freeway from four lanes to six
  • The state of Iowa wants to broaden U.S. Highway 20 up to four lanes to accommodate the growing demands of car-based travel
  • Alabama’s state government supports to widen the I-20/59 freeway — a highway that runs right through Birmingham’s city center

While they may provide the illusion of relief over the short term, these approaches amount to more pollution, more concrete, more construction and more problems in the future. They aren’t effectively addressing the root causes of gridlock and traffic-generated pollution; they’re simply masking the issue. We need commuters to think differently about their transportation options.

Planning for a better future can’t be done by catering to the needs of single-occupancy vehicles. Rather, governments must find ways to inspire commuters and travelers to make better use of alternatives like biking, walking, ridesharing, carpooling, vanpooling and public transit. How? By putting a new generation of powerful transportation planning tools into the hands of an increasingly larger base of users.

At RideAmigos, we’ve created a smarter way forward in the form of our critically-acclaimed transportation demand management software platform. It enables municipalities and governments to strategize and promote alternatives that generate meaningful results by transforming the ways people think about getting from point A to B.

Empowering commuters to make fully-informed transportation decisions is our specialty at RideAmigos. We provide end users with innovative and easy-to-use tools like an interactive commuter dashboard and multimodal trip planner to consider the wide array of options beyond single-occupancy vehicles.

A small investment in technology can pay big dividends and facilitate more effective allocation of limited resources.

Our user-focused software has been proven time and time again to reduce reliance on single-occupancy vehicles and make alternative options more accessible and more convenient than ever before. Effective solutions to traffic congestion happen when municipalities and governments take decisive steps to make it easier for people to leave their cars at home, and that’s the power of the RideAmigos platform.

Make better use of taxpayer dollars and be part of the solution rather than just sweeping the problem under the rug of a widened freeway. Contact RideAmigos today for an informative, eye-opening demonstration of the incredible power of our unique technology.