- Employers are tackling climate change starting from their office car parks.
- Parking software is helping employers to digitize their parking management.
- Version 1 and Sanofi have successfully used parking software to tackle their parking management problems and to fight climate change.
- Employers should look for full automation and integration features in their parking software selection process.
- Employers are using parking software to fight climate change by reducing workplace commute, implementing flexible working policies, and by reducing congestion in surrounding communities.
Employees circle endlessly in office car parks in search of available parking spaces. According to IBM, nearly sixty per cent of drivers in twenty international cities had abandoned their search for a parking space at least once after spending over twenty minutes looking for an empty parking space. The traffic generated from this daily search for parking spaces creates environmental pollution around offices globally.
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Book a DemoThe pollution contributes to climate change posing a huge threat to the world’s existence. Organizations are therefore making efforts to fight climate change by reducing their carbon footprint from various sources including office car parks.
Parking software such as Wayleadr provide a viable solution for employers to address their car park management issues. Software help companies to identify available spaces, allocate them, and communicate the unavailability of parking spaces to their employees.
Parking software and the effects of office parking difficulties
Difficult conditions at office car parks sometimes require employers to make offsite parking arrangements. Offsite parking arrangements have proven inefficient in the face of rising costs. In addition to environmental pollution, effects of office parking difficulties include congestion in surrounding areas and time wastage.
Companies needing parking solutions such as eliminating the high cost of offsite parking, increasing parking management efficiency at offices, and reducing the overall carbon footprint at their offices can use parking software. The parking needs in every company differs but parking software can provide solutions to each company’s specific needs.
Now, let’s see how some companies used parking software to solve their specific parking problems.
How Version 1 reduced its carbon footprint using parking software?
Version 1 wanted to reduce its carbon footprint. They had just adopted flexible working policies post-pandemic and were changing their location to a modern office. The newly adopted work policy allowed employees to work up to three days at home, and their new office offered only 30 parking spaces compared to the larger parking space at their former location. Since there will be different employees at the office every day, the management couldn’t determine accurately who needed access to the car park and when.
Chris Clarke stated the solution they needed at Version 1,
“With the flexibility that Version 1 offers its staff around working from home up to 3 days a week, we needed a solution that would allow us to manage employee parking in a world where different people are coming to the office every day.”
Version 1 discovered Wayleadr while searching for an effective parking software for their new office. They have since automated their entire parking management. With a priority on people with mobility and health issues, employees are allowed to book spaces only when they need them. The software was integrated with their barrier system to allow access only to employees with relevant bookings. A daily charge was also introduced for those using the parking facilities and the profits donated to charity.
How Sanofi optimised employee experiences using parking software
Managing onsite and offsite parking spaces was becoming a huge task for facilities administrators at Sanofi’s Spanish offices. The cost and time demands of car park management at these offices kept increasing. Yet, empty and unnoticed parking spaces remained a permanent feature at their onsite car parks.
Sanofi’s research into parking software helped them discover Wayleadr and other parking software. They chose to set up their Spanish offices with Wayleadr. Onsite parking is now readily available for staff members with a huge reduction in their real estate spending on parking. Surrounding communities around these offices are also less congested.
Sanofi’s Head of Facility & Record Management, Eric van Hout on the use of Wayleadr said,
“We used to contract almost 100 spaces off-site, we’ve now been able to reduce this massively. This leads to substantial savings which can be used elsewhere in the company”
Parking software features that help employers fight climate change
The features in parking software that help employers fight climate change at offices include:
- Full automation of parking management
Parking software offers employers a fully digitized solution by reducing the required human input in staff parking. This software allows staff members to check availability, book spaces, and release parking spots. Staff members also receive real-time alerts about the availability of spaces enabling them to adequately plan their daily work commute. Parking software ultimately brings employee car parks online allowing management teams to track parking facilities digitally.
- Integration with gates and barriers
Parking software such as Wayleadr enable easy integration with car park entry systems in these ways:
- Mobile Phone-Based Access Systems: The prevailing use of mobile phones enables car parks to be efficiently managed using QR codes and uniquely assigned IDs after reservation confirmation. This is useful in car parks with regular permitted users such as offices.
- Parking Management Software: Parking software offers employee parking management at offices. It can be used independently or integrated with parking gates. The software provides digitized entry and exit features, enables the reassignment of available slots, and updates the permitted users’ list in real-time.
Key approaches to using parking software to fight climate change
Companies are fighting climate change by using parking software to do the following in their office car parks:
- Reduce workplace commutes
Private cars commuting daily to the workplace are major sources of CO2 emissions. In the UK alone, daily commutes including workplace commute contribute up to 5% of the UK’s total emissions yearly. The high rate of pollution from driving workers makes it a priority for employers to reduce the carbon footprint of their workforce.
Employers can reduce employees driving to the workplace in the following ways:
- Encourage the use of alternative means of transportation to work with commuter benefits.
- Inform employees about the unavailability of parking spaces using parking software such as Wayleadr.
- Introduce daily park charges to encourage employees to leave their cars at home.
- Implement flexible working policies
Flexible working policies at companies means different employees are coming to work daily at different times. The complex nature of implementing flexible working policies requires the use of parking software to ensure the effective distribution of the available parking space. Parking software can help implement the flexible working policies of companies by allocating spaces only to employees coming to work daily.
- Reduce congestion in surrounding communities
Sanofi’s Spanish offices were causing congestions in surrounding communities until they adopted the use of parking software. The result was less traffic in communities around their office locations. Parking software such as Wayleadr ultimately help companies reduce congestion around their offices.
Conclusion
Employers must continue implementing sustainable development and environmental policies to fight climate change. The successful deployment of Wayleadr at Sanofi’s Spanish offices and Version 1 are proof that specific parking needs of every company can be appropriately addressed using parking software.
Employers using parking software to manage office car parks and adopting flexible working policies are right steps in fighting climate change. Staff members can be further encouraged to reduce their carbon footprint through commuter benefits and the collection of charges for the daily use of office car parks.
Looking for some real-life examples? Check out how companies like Sanofi, Version 1 & Sanderson have solved their parking problems.
