Introducing carpooling among employees

Why encourage employees to carpool? Unlike public passenger transport, carpooling is not an economic activity. It is quite simply a good gesture that the employees of an organisation can make to reduce their carbon footprint, and more broadly that of their company. In France in 2018, 272 746 tonnes of CO₂ were avoided thanks to long-distance carpooling (source: BlaBlaCar). Every day, more than 900 000 people carpool to get to work (source: ecologie.gouv), and the government is aiming for 3 million by 2024. Besides the environmental gains, carpooling brings a significant economic saving and helps to build ties between employees. How to encourage employees? Encouraging carpooling can take several forms: - Set up a company carpooling programme: this can include financial incentives, benefits such as parking spaces reserved for carpoolers, or rewards for shared kilometres. - Create an internal online carpooling platform or a dedicated app to make it easier to connect employees interested in carpooling. This can quite simply take the form of a shared Excel spreadsheet within the company. - Launch awareness campaigns to inform employees about the environmental and economic benefits of carpooling. Use various communication channels such as posters, e-mails, team meetings and presentations. - Establish partnerships with existing carpooling services to offer special discounts to the company’s employees. These partnerships can make carpooling solutions easier to access and make the experience more attractive. - Organise events to promote the carpooling programme, such as information meetings, carpooling breakfasts or practical workshops to answer questions and encourage participation. - Offer flexible working hours to employees who carpool, in order to allow for the adjustments needed to synchronise working schedules. - Provide carpoolers with tracking of the carbon emissions avoided through carpooling. Regular reports on the positive environmental impact can strengthen participants’ motivation.

Sector:

France