While technology has made a completely new landscape for how employees can work, commuting to work is still required by many companies. Remote work has taken strong waves within companies since March 2020 when the pandemic began taking place. More companies have switched to complete remote work, while others have buckled down and refused this. While it’s understandable some jobs require people to be in person, particularly manual labor, it has led to alarming concerns. The average employee spends on average per day around 25 to 30 minutes commuting to their jobs. This is roughly an hour each day, and sometimes even longer than that.

This can be long, tiresome, and it can also drastically decrease employee productivity rates. Long commutes are even known for heavily interfering with employees both physically and mentally. One of the biggest reasons why employees love working remotely is due to taking out commuting. Commuting to and from work takes a lot of time, and not having this gives employees more free time and flexibility.

 Employees are likely to leave a company if it means getting to work from home or even at least trying to cut their commute time. As an employer, it’s important to make commuting less painful. It’s important to boost company happiness. These are a few ways to do just that!

Look into offering company commuter benefits

Most companies don’t help with transportation costs that employees are needing to spend just to get to work. Offering monetary contributions towards employee transportation can ease their financial burdens. Commutes are costly, this includes cars, ride-sharing, and even public transport. Taxis and ride-sharing apps tend to be far more expensive during rush hour, the same can be said for public transport as well. Offering some type of employee transit benefits will make commuting far easier for employees. Some ideas can include:

• Care tune-ups
• Gas gift cards
• Parking reimbursement
• Pre-tax funding benefits
• Public transportation coverage
• Ridesharing reimbursement

Even just offering resources to help save your employees time and money will drastically help. This doesn’t mean that the employer is automatically expected to fully reimburse or pay for their employees traveling, but offering some type of assistance will help a lot. This is also going to increase employee happiness and satisfaction as well.

Offer company vehicles

Company-owned vehicles are slowly sweeping across the country. This is a practice that many companies within Europe practice and it has proven to bring a lot of employee satisfaction. Owning company vehicles and leading them out to employees is a great method of making the commute to and from work less of a burden. This is also going to help employees who need to do work off-site.

Many companies have the expectation that their employees need to use their own vehicle for off-site work and this only leads to the company looking completely unorganized and professional. Sure, the idea of owning company cars can sound costly such as having to buy the car, do repairs, maintenance, car insurance, taxes, and so much more. It sounds expensive but there are plenty of tax benefits and other ways to save money. 

Employees can even fix these cars thanks to Chevy Do It Yourself shop manuals. Having the company repair their own company vehicles is a great way to cut costs.  Of course, there is always the option of leading company cars, there is a lot of debate on which is best, buying or leasing. But, it’s entirely up to the company to decide because there are advantages and disadvantages to both.

Prioritize wellness

A great way to boost your company the way it needs would be through placing a priority on wellness. Long commutes, whether it’s riding or driving can be such a strain. Most rush hour commutes are spent just waiting for time to pass. There are plenty of studies that even link commuting to various health issues as well.  

Sadly, mental health still doesn’t seem to be a priority in our society and the workplace still wants to turn a blind eye to it. It’s very unfortunate and this needs to break away. It’s crucial to begin prioritizing wellness. Many employees leave their job due to their mentality and what they face at work. This is one of the biggest contributors to employees leaving.

In order to combat this, employers should look into creative ways to prioritize wellness. This can include offering insurance that pays for mental health services, offers discount rates for mental health facilities and services such as a therapist. But mental health is only a part of it because physical health counts as well.  Some unique ideas can include in-office massages, gym reimbursements, standing desks, and even healthy snacks. Also look into doing employee activities outside of the office such as a sports league, or fun get-togethers.

Offer flexible work schedules

Some jobs cannot be done remotely, but if one of your employees has a job that can easily be done remotely, why not allow it? Telecommuting policies and flexible work schedules are ways for getting employee loyalty. A day just working at home is sometimes all that an employee needs. This allows them to sleep in a bit longer, get more things done at home, and even be far more productive at their job. 

There are ways to track remote work if you’re ever concerned about your employees not being productive outside of the site. Just make sure that there are policies at work that include clear guidelines around expectations. But also ensure that the company offers flexibility for employees as well.

 Other ways can even include allowing for a more flexible work schedule. Rush hour is the worst time because everyone is trying to get to work. This is also the most common time where delays happen thanks to accidents or other mishaps. Why not try offering your employee a more flexible schedule so they won’t have to deal with rush hour. Even for public transport, rush hour can be a nightmare. Allowing employees to show up to work after rush hour can boost morale, improve their mental health, plus drastically decreases the chances of them showing up late.