Modernising your Mobility Policy – Eight Steps to Sustainable Change
- 14 August 2023
Steps 1-3: Analysing your Organisational Needs
You’ve noticed that the hybrid working trends – working from home, travelling less, and travelling differently – are creating complications in your organisation’s operations. These challenges may be impacting your ability to control costs or recruit and retain talent in an evolving workforce. At the same time, your organisation may face a myriad of new administration and reporting requirements brought about by changes to transportation and tax laws and regulations.
Mobility programs, perhaps merely an afterthought in legacy benefit schemes, have become a key issue for corporate policymakers, one that needs to be tackled now to ensure profitability, competitive employee recruitment, and future sustainability. Is your organisation behind in mobility planning? Are you ready for the future?
Organisational change is difficult, and XXImo understand the headwinds that companies face when implementing a new mobility policy. We have also witnessed how crucial it is to get the mobility program right, and we are committed to helping our clients each step of the way.
In this blog post – the first in a series of three – we will outline how to analyse your current and future mobility needs, and match those needs to the business objectives of your mobility policy. Over the next two blog posts, we will offer suggestions on implementing a new mobility policy and ways to ensure that, once it place, your mobility scheme remains up-to-date and continues to meet your initial objectives.
To begin the process, we first need to clarify the business case for better mobility and examine our business objectives.
What goals do you have when it comes to mobility? Creating and changing mobility policies require a series of decisions that will impact your company, its employees and its community; therefore, defining your business objectives now and outlining how a mobility policy will support those objectives will be paramount to making and communicating policy updates down the road.
Below are the most common business objectives when implementing mobility policies:
- Sustainability – This objective places more focus on meeting corporate responsibility goals and environmental regulations. Reducing CO2 emissions, decreasing travel volume, and encouraging sustainable mobility choices can aid in this objective.
- Cost reduction – The objective of reducing mobility costs places more focus on tailoring reimbursement procedures based on actual travel costs, reducing fixed costs–such as leased cars and subscriptions–and emphasising more cost-effective methods of travel.
- Flexibility and freedom – Meeting employee needs for flexibility and choice can improve working conditions and aid in employee recruitment and retention. This objective place an emphasis on freedom, empowerment, and shared decision-making for business trips, commuting, and other mobility choices.
Your objectives will likely comprise several of these goals. If you find several objectives to be essential, decide which element to focus on first.
A thorough analysis of your mobility practices requires asking the right questions. Here are some questions to help get you started.
Please note, the questions are categorized based on business objectives, but as you will see, many of the questions impact several objectives.
Sustainability
How close is your company located to public transport?
Does the population density around your company allow for shared transport opportunities (more urban = greater shared transport opportunities)?
Is electric transport given priority?
Cost Reduction
What are your current mobility costs, and how much cost reduction is needed?
Can you reduce parking facilities?
Are your mobility costs structured mostly of fixed costs or MaaS (Mobility as a Service)?
Flexibility and freedom
Does your program offer freedom of choice?
Do your employees feel empowered or restricted in their mobility options?
Has your mobility program helped in attracting and retaining talent?
How can you translate the objective into your policy? Let us show you by means of some examples.
Company X wants employees to travel more sustainably and thus reduce CO2 emissions in the mobility policy, so it includes the following points:
- Employees are given access to all modes of sustainable transport (public transport, electric shared bicycle and car) via a mobility card.
- The guidelines indicate when you can use which transport option— travelling up to 10 kilometres by bike, above that by public transport and shared car.
- Bicycle kilometres are reimbursed at a higher rate than car kilometres for commuting.
- Mileage with an electric car is reimbursed at a higher rate than car mileage based on petrol or diesel.
Company Y wants to reduce the cost of mobility. It includes the following points in its mobility policy:
- No more public transport season tickets issued. Instead, employees receive a mobility card. Thus, only the trips that are actually made are paid for.
- Reducing the number of leased cars. The leased car is no longer an automatic fringe benefit in certain job positions. A mobility budget will take its place.
- Shared cars are used for business meetings that require a car.
- Employees with a fuel card are only allowed to refuel at certain petrol stations, thus controlling fuel costs.
Company Z opts for flexibility and freedom of choice in mobility. Its mobility policy includes the following points:
- Employees can use all modes of transport. Depending on their schedule, they decide whether they need to travel and, if so, which means of transport best suits their journey and daily schedule. A mobility card and mobility budget give them that freedom.
- All mobility options can be used. The employee is “at the wheel” and manages their own mobility budget.
- There is flexibility in terms of work location and working hours.
There are endless possibilities to tailor a policy to your objectives, and you will see that components from these three examples can also be combined in a single mobility policy.
Hopefully, this article has provided the framework to draft an initial mobility plan with your business objectives and mobility needs prioritized. The next blog in this series will guide you through the process of formalising and implementing a new, sustainable mobility policy at your organisation.
Curious about all the eight steps to a sustainable change in your mobility policy? Download our white paper.