Your organization wants to promote alternate modes of travel. You want to encourage your employees to skip solo car rides and try other ways to commute. Maybe you want to help reduce emissions and improve air quality, maybe you want your employees to improve their health. Or maybe you have limited parking and are looking for creative solutions to that problem.
Whatever your motivation, implementing radical change can be difficult, so why not start small? Create a “Multimodal Monday” where employees are encouraged to ditch the single rider car trips and choose to carpool, use active transportation or try transit.
How to get employees to participate?
Gamification – Make a game of it. Use competition, or a rewards system to motivate people to participate. Create teams and have them compete. Offering a small prize for the team with the most people participating. Have the budget? Incentivize individuals to participate in a set number of days to earn a prize.
Recognition – No money for prizes? Try recognition. Create a chart that tracks individual or team success. Use a point system or even a graph to measure success. Depending on the organization, try raffling off something that costs no money like an extra break or a casual dress day.
Parking Perks – Create carpool only parking spaces or set aside a special parking space for the top performing team or individual.
“One of the simplest and most effective affordable rewards is offering VIP parking spaces to employees who carpool,” wrote Lisa Oberstaller for pave.commute.app “It doesn’t cost the company a thing, yet it’s a huge motivator. The best parking spots near the entrance can be reserved for carpoolers, sending a clear message that sustainable commuting is valued.”
How do you keep track of the winners? There are many ways. The easiest is the number of “Multimodal Mondays” someone participates in. Want to incentivize carpooling? Kathryn Hagerman of commutehub.com suggests tracking the most commutes or the number of rideshare miles traveled.
Get employees started
Once you have established the parameters for the program, you may need to help employees get started. Time is a premium, so creating a team or committee to help organize might be beneficial.
One easy way to help employees participate, is to post a map or list of transit stops in the area. Even better would be to post a map of all the transit routes in the area to help employees figure out what bus or buses they would need to take to work.
If people want to cycle, let them know where they can park their bikes safely. Is there somewhere they can lock them up? Is there a storage space inside the business they can store them?
For potential carpoolers, post a sign-up sheet where people can not only share their interest in carpooling, but can also give their location. Have some extra time? Create a small event where potential carpoolers can meet. Let them talk and figure out not only if the locations make sense, but the personalities mesh.
Creating a culture of reduced car trips is not easy, but starting small, just one day a week, can make a difference.
