Implementing an Effective and Efficient Employee Parking Program

Implementing an Effective and Efficient Employee Parking Program

The Problem

Upon initial assessment, the primary issue for our client was a severe lack of parking spaces. Overall, there were not enough spaces to accommodate the hospital’s employees, patients and visitors. Moreover, the hospital’s staff and team members consistently made use of the majority of available spaces, and often parked in the spots closest to the building, leaving patients and other patrons to park at a further distance.

At the same time, the hospital was growing at an exponential rate, which directly resulted in both an increase of patients and a rise in employees. While the hospital was growing steadily, it’s customer satisfaction was declining. The amount of complaints about parking availability was consistently negatively impacting the hospital’s client survey scores. Adding to the issue, our client’s growth also resulted in massive construction throughout the property. Parking spaces were limited throughout the hospital’s campus, and the traffic congestion was barely manageable.

Related article: Monetizing an Underperforming Parking Asset

Challenges Faced

Upon evaluation, it was clear our client was faced with a range of roadblocks. The hospital’s workforce was disgruntled and concerned about being displaced from onsite parking, making the conversation about a new employee parking plan a difficult one. The strategy wouldn’t work if everyone wasn’t willing to adhere to it. Further, the hospital was working with limited resources and needed to stay within strict previously established budget restrictions. Another factor that complicated matters further was that the local freight and logistics industry transported its two largest daily freight loads during the same peak times that employees were arriving to and leaving work. Combined with massive traffic congestion and road construction, our client’s individualised employee parking program needed to address each of these complex issues.

The Elite Team Strategy

As part of our strategy, we used the Elite Operating System to outline our client’s vision and how our progress could be clearly measured. After carefully evaluating the hospital’s unique needs, we developed a workforce parking plan that utilizes a parking structure approximately 1.5 miles away from the hospital and employee shuttles. We designed a contracting strategy that cut down on large capital investments for the hospital and removed all the risk associated with providing the shuttle service. We developed an optimized route schedule for the service shuttles that took into consideration the expansive construction and traffic congestion in the area.

Knowing that employee buy-in was critical to the program’s success, we created a parking and transit solution that put the employees first. The plan accounted for issues important to the workforce, such as on-time performance, dependability and consistent and safe shuttle services. Prior to the parking program’s rollout, we worked with the hospital to host several town hall style meetings to make sure that employees had the opportunity to share their concerns and have them addressed. We also gamified the new program’s launch to help engage employees and encourage them to embrace the changes. To ensure maximum use and efficiency, we also created a monitoring and enforcement strategy to identify noncompliance among employees.

One particularly helpful innovation was to Integrate ETRAC and E-Command into the strategy to enhance user satisfaction. Employees were given access to a tailor-made app with real-time GPS tracking for dispatched vehicles and active route monitoring, as well as a point of contact that can be reached 24/7 for all related performance and service issues. Once all of these tools were in place, we provided our client with monthly updates about employee usage rates and efficiency so the strategy could be updated as needed.

How the Solution Helped

By relocating much of the employee parking offsite, the Elite Operating Strategy freed up hundreds of parking spaces for patients and visitors, allowing them to better serve their hospital community. Since inadequate parking had previously been a top complaint, this transformation in operations increased the overall patient satisfaction surveys for the hospital. The hospital was able to deploy a safe and DOT compliant employee parking plan without a large financial investment and with zero service liability. The solution also allowed the hospital to complete their construction project successfully and on time. Moving forward, the strategy also significantly decreased the amount of traffic congestion onsite during peak employee arrival and departure times.

The Results

In the end, the Elite Team Strategy transformed the day-to-day parking operations for our client, while taking over 100% of the hospital’s operating risk and funding 100% of the CAPEX investments for the program. After instituting the plan, an average of 97% of the hospital’s employees used the offsite parking program, vastly freeing up valuable spaces for patients and visitors.