How To Increase Parking For Your Employees In A City

The UK faces a severe parking crisis, and employees find it frustrating to get daily parking. This scarcity of parking spaces has become quite a headache for employers since it is directly responsible for its human resources and economic costs. Employers providing sustainable parking solutions find that employees are less stressed and have a more productive outlook throughout the day. 

When employees are unable to find parking, they tend to drive extremely fast to reach before time. Doing this causes severe accidents, stress, and a marked decrease in efficiency throughout the day. When considering parking for employees, there are a few things to look at:

How can businesses maintain a sustainable parking solution for the long term?

How can businesses find solutions without a severe hit to the bottom line?

Keeping these points in mind, let us look at increasing parking for your employees in a city. 

Parking Management Software

Parking management app YourParkingSpace.co.uk has a pre-booking scheme that enables staff to find available spaces efficiently. These parking spaces are economical and can be booked hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly for ease of use. Efficiently offering the parking management software as a solution allows for better control over the parking issue and allows an easy way out for managing the car parking. 

This app is straightforward, easy to manage, offers different time slots, has plenty of availability, and allows for an overall decrease in parking overheads. It is quick to implement parking guidelines and ensure all employees are registered on the app. Doing this will steadily increase employee efficiency and boost overall morale and performance. 

Parking Policy:

Many businesses have allocated parking spaces. If this is the case, employers usually provide preferential access to certain executives. However, this does not solve the overall parking issue since parking spots may be unused if an employee is out of the office. If there is a staggered system for post-Covid working, another employee could use the parking in an absence. Reserving parking spaces for out-of-office employees isn’t sustainable in the long term. 

If there is a first-come-first-served parking system, employees who drive to work early will always get parking, and those who report later may still be left stranded. Without a reserved spot like with YourParkingSpace, all allocated employee spaces may get filled by staff who arrive early. While making parking policy decisions, it is best to offer parking spaces to employees from the app instead of providing a pro-rata-based parking slot. 

Car-sharing:

Many offices offer car-sharing options for staff who live in the same locality. Carsharing could be facilitated on the internal business software or via social media groups. However, employers will have to offer an incentive to employees to leave their cars and ride with other colleagues.

Car-sharing solutions are cost-effective, economically sound alternatives that help reduce fuel costs, keep morale high, and increase productivity. Carpooling can also be facilitated with fuel contributions, reserved parking space allocations, and ease of pairing up options. 

Car Parks:

Local car park operators help expand the parking supply for employees. Negotiating a long term contractual rate for company employees (with a massive discount) could also be a good idea for bulk parking slots. 

Many car parking operators also offer weekly and short term parking bays (on a need basis). However, these types of slots do not receive lower rates and are often charged hourly or daily. To get the best rate, it is best to opt for a biannual or yearly contract with a set number of parking bays for staff. 

Alternative Transport Solutions:

Many large businesses offer a contract bus service for areas and localities where maximum employees live. Some companies also provide several spots where staff can use the buses to travel to and from work. If providing transportation services for employees is turning out to be too expensive, it is also possible to encourage employees to use public transport, or for those who live nearby to cycle or walk to work. Doing this is tricky since most staff members prefer to drive to work and save energy for the entire day. However, providing parking spaces for bikes would be more cost-effective than purchasing the spots for cars. 

Employers can also offer monthly bus and train passes to employees at a discount to encourage public transport. Alternative transport solutions are highly effective for staff who live at a distance and need to save time in travel and traffic.

Adam Hansen
 

Adam is a part time journalist, entrepreneur, investor and father.