Beginning with Drafting an Employee Parking Policy

Upon regular employment, all full-time or part-time employees should be assigned personal parking space by your company. Especially if you live in an area where parking is a huge issue, this is even more important to consider. 

For instance, you could segment parking spaces from employees working at your company to visitor parking spaces, higher powers within the company, and more. However, a parking permit should be displayed whenever someone is coming to park. 

If an individual doesn’t possess a parking permit or does not park correctly, their car should be towed if any action isn’t taken after the set amount of time your company has stated. In this article, we will discuss how you should set up your employee parking policy. 

Drafting an Employee Parking Policy

Drafting an employee parking policy

Setting up your parking policy may be complex initially, but it is actually easier than you think. We took an employee parking policy sample from Workable Better Hiring to ensure you apply the same rules to make things easier for you. Even though parking policies are similar, starting from scratch may be difficult from time to time. 

Policy purpose

Parking policies aim to serve employees and visitors parking spaces stress-free whenever they come to your office. However, if you live in an area with huge traffic jams and difficulties parking your car, you know how hard it may be to park your vehicle. Especially considering that there are more than 1.4 billion cars in the world, someday, we might see the same number of vehicles as people. 

Moreover, the policy aims to ensure that authorized people are parking within the company’s territories, securing a safe and clean parking lot, and the proper rules for managing parking spaces. 

Criteria for parking spaces

Companies possessing an employee parking policy can reserve parking spaces for employees and executives who drive company vehicles. However, large company vehicles such as trucks will usually have their own parking spaces since they take up much more space. 

Parking spaces should be allocated to the following people: 

  • Pregnant women and disabled employees 
  • Night shift workers 
  • Full-time and part-time employees 
  • Contract employees 
  • Interns & volunteers 

Of course, visitors should have the privilege of reserved parking spaces. Try to separate special parking spots for visitors and give them a special pass or put up a sign where visitors can park. However, some companies charge for parking spaces because the entire parking space doesn’t belong to the company personally. If this is your case, ensure to provide discounts or a low yearly fee rate. 

Parking space rules

Ensure drivers maintain a clean parking space and follow these particular rules: 

  • Avoid throwing garbage in parking spaces (littering) 
  • Drivers must respect each other’s rules
  • Drivers should drive slowly and carefully 
  • Employees should avoid fixing their cars in the parking lots, except if their vehicle didn’t start

Managing parking spaces

Parking spaces aren’t long-life benefits. If employees aren’t following rules, you can take disciplinary action, or if parking is limited, you can re-assign it to people who need it most. But, of course, it’ll depend on your parking property and if you have enough for everyone or not. 

Employees shouldn’t be able to transfer parking spaces between each other and shouldn’t have more than one parking space. Moreover, employees shouldn’t be allowed to do the following: 

  • Parking at spaces for the disabled 
  • Parking incorrectly or illegally 
  • Parking in unauthorized areas 
  • Parking in front of entrances and more 

Vehicles that don’t respect these regulations should be towed, and you as a company shouldn’t hold any liability for damaged, stolen cars, and more. 

When you should take disciplinary measures

Employees who park in unauthorized areas or don’t follow the parking policy should receive a warning and act upon it. If these actions repeat themselves, the parking benefit shall be removed. If employees continue to disrespect the policy, they will face disciplinary consequences, which may even lead to termination. 

What are the popular types of employee parking policies?

What are the popular types of employee parking policies? 

1. First Come, First Served parking policy

This policy is more of a flexible policy that doesn’t reserve parking spaces for anyone but has certain spots reserved for all employees. So, whoever gets in first, gets the spot. 

This parking policy method is popular amongst companies who want to be fair to all employees. However, companies with this type of policy usually have large parking spaces. When parking spaces are limited, things will start to change up. 

Moreover, sometimes, things may get out of hand between staff members. For example, issues will start when employees fight between parking spaces or their car gets scratched. After all, things may get out of control when employees live far away and have a hard time coming from all of the traffic. 

At the end of the day, it all depends on where your employees live. After all, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work has become more common, and many employees are reconsidering their transportation methods. 

2. Reserved parking policy

You’ve most likely seen the reserved sign before you park somewhere. That type of parking policy is usually for companies who don’t have enough parking spaces or see other policies as unfair. Companies will use a set of criteria to allocate parking spaces for their employees, such as: 

  • Carpoolers 
  • Unique needs 
  • Length of tenure 
  • Seniority 

The success of remote work is leading experts to change the way they operate since we can agree that office work won’t ever be the same as it was. So, we can expect staff members to be working a few days and a few days remotely. 

After all, it’s beneficial for companies to have a hybrid schedule since they don’t have to worry about paying those extra fees on reserving parking spots. 

3. Mixed policy

A common approach by many companies after the beginning of the pandemic is to use a mixed method. This approach mainly allows employees to park their cars based on a first-come, first-served. However, while a mixed parking policy is an excellent choice, it declined after the beginning of the pandemic. 

4. Flexible policy

Out of all the parking policies, the flexible approach seems to be the best one, especially after the beginning of the pandemic. Instead of communicating through your phone to find out where you have to park, companies are starting to use employee parking software. With the help of the software, it identifies who needs to park and when they need to do so. 

The software regulates everything and handles the stress needed for parking without requiring anyone to intervene. Parking spaces can be reserved for specific staff members. However, if they aren’t used, they can be reassigned to other staff members. 

On the other hand, certain zones can be identified as paid parking or first-come, first-served. The real-time data does an excellent job in managing parking spaces and allows companies to save time and money on it! 

5. Paid employee parking

A fast-growing approach might just be a common approach in the future of a hybrid working schedule. Paid employee parking might be the best alternative in the future and when parking spaces are so limited. 

However, some companies want employees to get rid of their cars and start using other methods of transportation—for example, a bike, train, bus, or even walking if they live close by. 

Alternatively, some companies might offer a set of free days employees can park, and others might never do so. Leaving your car at home might be the new normal, and driving to work will be a luxury alternative. But, if you think about it closely, when you choose to go to work by bike, by a bus, or another choice, you’re saving money on gas, and these savings accumulate in the long term. 

Wrapping it up

That’s all on employee parking policies. Hopefully, you got a clear picture of how you should set up your employee parking policy. Undoubtedly, hybrid and remote working methods are becoming more common, so flexible approaches are being taken. However, firstly, it depends on how your company functions. Are you more focused on a remote working schedule, hybrid, or is your company all about the office? 

Secondly, you need to consider where your parking space is and how many spots are available. This will identify if you need to reserve places or implement the first-come, first-served approach. 

Lastly, it all depends on how many employees you have and whether or not you are promoting the idea of your employees coming to work with a car or not. If you want them to avoid their cars altogether, consider including the paid parking policy. 

Francis Nwokike

Francis Nwokike is the Founder and Chief Editor of The Total Entrepreneurs. A Social Entrepreneur and experienced Disaster Manager. He loves researching and discussing business trends and providing startups with valuable insights into running a profitable business. He created TTE to share ideas and tips to help entrepreneurs run and grow their businesses.