Travelling Back to the Office Safely - Planning for FMs

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09 November 2020

Planning how employees can travel back to the office safely and efficiently will be a major focus for many FM professionals, according to research by ParkOffice.

15+ tech, mobility & real estate experts have come together to produce a guide to managing employee transportation in the COVID era. The COVID Employee Transportation Playbook maps out how a broad range of mobility options including e-scooters, car-sharing, bike-sharing and parking software can make it easier and safer for employers to return staff safely to the office.

ParkOffice.io CMO Daithí de Buitléir commented: “Managing employee travel has never been more important for companies. Around the world, when a country emerges from lockdown, employees are demanding safe and reliable transport in order to return to offices. 

“We wanted to create a centralised resource where employers could easily assess the options and identify the methods which best suit their business.”

Commuter Management Under FM’s Remit

The report states that, for a lot of businesses, particularly those with head-counts in the hundreds, commuter management has loosely fallen under the remit of the facilities management teams.

Facilities management is an incredibly broad brief and in the eyes of many FMs commuting has not been seen as an essential problem to solve.

A school of thought has emerged that employees spend eight to ten hours a day in the office and only a matter of minutes availing of commuting facilities, so it's easier to focus on the office experience. This attitude was slowly shifting as companies realised commuter management was shaping employee mood each day as they arrived at the office.

COVID has really driven employees and employers to reflect on the whole workplace experience. As working from home becomes a real long-term alternative to the office, FMs are being pressed to come up with solutions to ensure that returning to the office is a safe, easy and fulfilling experience.

Key takeaways from the report include:

• The increasing demand for parking and e-bikes as employees avoid public transport in the short-term.
• The challenges facing micro-mobility operators who are often used by public transport users to complete journeys.
• The steps public transport operators are taking to restore confidence to their services as a mode of employee transportation. 

Picture: a photograph of the interior of a car

Article written by Ella Tansley | Published 09 November 2020

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