In the majority of companies, parking availability is at a premium. Most organisations have more staff than parking spaces. What’s more, as they continue to grow and hire more staff, they’re not often able to expand their parking solutions, which only makes the problem worse.
The good news is that there are a few things that companies can do to make the overall experience better, keep staff informed and help them make the most of the situation.
The Biggest Problems with Limited Car Parking at Work
A lack of company parking resources isn’t just a minor nuisance, it’s a major disruption for impacted employees. Understanding the true impacts of limited parking on a business and its workforce will help realise the true value of effective parking solutions.
Arguments over available car park spaces
Few things frustrate employees more than searching for parking spaces. This can be a key source of daily stress, especially for those that commute long distances only to find space isn’t available.
Conflict can easily arise between employees that feel they’re unable to park, and those that seem to gain from the system. This can impact teamwork, overall employee satisfaction and many other factors that are harmful to business operations.
It’s Often the Only Free Parking
In certain areas, the only available spaces for employees are on-site. When parking shortages occur, drivers generally have very few alternative options:
- If you’re in the city, urban parking often comes at a premium and, outside of commercial parking lots, it’s usually limited to strict hourly periods.
- If you’re out of the city, than the problem can be worse, with no commercial parking spots available, and few streets that are safe and/or legal to park on.
In either case, the challenge of finding parking each day becomes a critical risk. Not finding space isn’t just an issue of convenience. Parking further away adds more time coming to and from the office, whilst commercial parking solutions add an extra cost that employees need to factor.
Parking Availability isn’t Evenly Distributed
When parking operates on a first-come, first-served basis, it’s never fair. If available parking spaces are limited, some employees will consistently benefit more than others.
For example, staff that live closer, have the convenience of leaving a little earlier than normal in order to ensure they have a space. Meanwhile, drivers that commute from further afield often can’t afford to wake up even earlier and hence miss out entirely.
The same also applies to shift-based teams. If parking spaces aren’t reserved in advance, secondary shifts are at the mercy of primary shifts freeing up spots in time. Any delay from the previous teams creates a problem for the next rotation. Do they find alternatives, or do they wait around until parking spaces become available again?
The Parking Experience Impacts the Overall Employee Experience
All of the above parking challenges have a common thread: they irritate, annoy and outright impact staff. This inability to efficiently get to work can greatly influence the overall company experience.
Over time, it can also generally impact business productivity. If teams can’t arrive on time, work starts late, meetings and other team-based operations get delayed, and work slows down overall.
6 Ways to Optimize Car Park Management
In this section, we’re going to cover everything from simple policy changes to smart parking technologies. However, that doesn’t mean you need to implement all of them! Completely reworking your parking infrastructure is expensive and, for most cases, not necessary to improve the parking experience.
Create a Fair Parking Policy
When you have more staff than parking space, there will always be high demand. The goal of internal policies to implement fair use. This is done by:
- Requiring employees to reserve spaces ahead of time.
- Limiting how often staff can reserve spaces over a given period.
- Requesting those with their own allocated spaces to provide notice when they know they won’t be using the space.
Your wider parking policy will have to consider a lot more factors, such as disabled access, shift-based criteria and electric vehicles, but these key starting points will certainly lead to a better, seamless experience.
Such policies not only improve overall efficiency, they help staff to make more informed decisions. When they know a parking space isn’t reserved for them, and no spots are available, they haven’t wasted time commuting that day.
Manage Parking Capacity with an App
A policy is great in theory, but it needs practical application. If you’re enforcing your parking rules through a manual spreadsheet, there’s a lot of room for error. Mistakes can be made and people can abuse the system, and last minute changes are hard to cater to.
A workplace parking app, however, will handle this for you. It gives employees the freedom to reserve spaces when possible under your guidelines, whilst also granting an overview of available parking spaces. It keeps everyone in the loop, eliminates manual oversight and makes policies all the more enforceable.
Implement ANPR Technology
ANPR, or automatic number-plate recognition, refers to cameras that are specialized in recognizing and reading license plates on vehicles.
In an office setting, ANPR can be used to monitor car parking spots, determine if the right vehicles are parked, and identify when unauthorized drivers are using your limited parking spaces.
Is it essential for smooth operation? No. In most cases, we wouldn’t recommend implementing ANPR systems yourself as they’re very expensive.
However, there are situations where such innovative solutions do make a lot of sense. For example, in mixed-use developments, such as office complexes connected to retail spaces, ANPR can prevent public visitors from using private employee parking spaces. It’s also ideal for spaces with time-sensitive parking, helping to ensure vehicles don’t overstay their welcome.
In these cases, it’s useful for tracking violations and enabling companies to respond appropriately. However, for companies with their own parking facilities that are less likely to be abused by outsiders, and who don’t have significant violations of their own, this countermeasure is not as important as proactive measures.
Negotiate with Nearby Parking Facilities
Since you can’t create additional parking spaces, the next best thing is to consider sourcing them from nearby parking facilities.
If your office is fortunate to be near commercial parking lots, reach out to the managers. You may be able to negotiate a special deal. Owners of such sites may give you a discount as you’re representing regular business through your employees’ cars.
In extreme situations, such as when more people are called to work than normal, your company can also consider covering the extra costs. This fully depends on how much you require staff to be on-site. If it’s a key requirement, then the extra parking costs should potentially be addressed with employees.
Encourage Carpooling
To alleviate limited parking spots, you can implement carpooling initiatives at work. With more employees coming per vehicle, this relieves some of the demand.
You may need to offer some additional benefits or perks for those who take up the initiative. This can include:
- Guaranteed parking spots for those who carpool. The promise of free parking is often the biggest incentive, but you can further build on this by prioritizing the most choice spots, such as those close to the office.
- Vouchers and other small gifts for key milestones. These don’t impact work, but they still recognise the efforts taken.
- Fuel allowance. Drivers often argue that carpooling involves more fuel, depending on the route. Offering to cover some of these costs can be encouraging.
Whether or not this works for you depends on how many employees you have, if they start and finish work at the same time, and the availability of participants within a geographical area.
Finally, we also want to add that it’s important to have an automated system in place. With carpooling, there is the risk that designated drivers don’t come to work. If they don’t, and the system isn’t enabled to update people, this leaves other workers stuck at home, too. We created Poola to help in not only planning daily carpooling, but also to avoid these challenges.
Motivate Remote Work or Alternative Days in the Office
Another way to address limited parking space is to encourage people to come to work on different days. This can be more impactful than you think.
In a study by CBRE, 73% of companies said that Tuesday has the highest attendance rates, followed by Wednesday (23%) and Thursday (3%). This same study also revealed workplace capacity peaks at 80%, so there’s a good chance your busiest and quietest days are in stark contrast to one another.
So, if you can get people to use the office on Monday instead of Tuesday, this will be much easier on your parking facilities.
In practice, this is never a guarantee, as it’s not without its hurdles. People like to come to the office when the rest of their team or colleagues are there. Similarly, nobody likes coming to the office on Mondays or Fridays.
Take a look at your internal data and see what you can do. If there are certain teams that come in on a given day, maybe ask why and if it’s possible to change the date. The promise of a better parking experience might win them over.
What Else Can Improve the Overall Parking Experience?
The above car parking solutions focused solely on the challenges of demand vs availability. However, modern car parks are a little more complex when you factor in the additional requirements some drivers might have.
Visitor Parking
If your office has frequent visitors, you should factor guests into your parking policy. First, who will reserve car park spaces on behalf of incoming guests? This should be implemented in policy to ensure it always happens successfully.
Secondly, you should ensure visitor parking takes priority. If possible, using the same spaces every time is advisable, as this will make it easier to give guests clear directions for parking.
Charging Stations
Electric vehicles are becoming more and more important and, if you have charging stations within your parking facilities, you may want to treat these spaces differently.
In broad strokes, EV charger management can work in two different ways:
- You clearly mark such parking spaces and prioritise drivers with EV vehicles.
- If there are significantly more electric or hybrid vehicles than charging stations, you can consider breaking shifts into multiple sub-shifts, so that each driver gets some time to use them.
There’s no right or wrong answer here. It depends entirely on your company culture and preference.
The Most Innovative Solutions Aren’t Always Complex
As you can see, there are many ways to improve company car parking, ranging from simple policy guidelines to advanced technologies.
However, the truth is that the simplest approaches are often the best. Your goal isn’t to create new parking spaces, but to simply utilise existing spots to their full extent. This is why a clear parking policy, supported by an app to eliminate manual oversights, is the best way to go.
With Parkalot, for example, you can configure the system to follow your parking rules. You can establish different groups, enable rules for each and easily implement your policies into the system.
In turn, employees can use the app – or its various integrations – to reserve spots ahead of time. All staff confirm their attendance the evening before, with unused spots going back into the pool and assigned to someone on the waitlist.
Staff benefit from being able to easily claim parking spots and benefitting from real-time data regarding available car parking spaces. There’s no fighting over spaces, no surprises when spots aren’t available, and a clear schedule that ensures fairness across teams.
