The Issues:
Long, grueling commutes cause people to quit jobs or to pass up job openings.- Job growth is increasing in areas that are not as well served by public transportation, thus becoming less accessible for workers lacking personal transportation. This limits your labor pool.
- Commuting conditions strongly affect job satisfaction. Commute burnout causes employees to quit jobs.
- Replacing employees is expensive. It costs 1.5 times the annual salary to replace an employee (due to advertising costs, training costs, productivity downtime, etc.) For a $30,000 employee, this equals $45,000 lost.
- Significant numbers of commuters would consider quitting jobs or moving to avoid worsening congestion.
(Sources: AAA survey, 1999; VDOT survey, 1998)
As you can see above, commuting has a heavy impact on the recruitment and retention of employees. Washington area employers are facing worsening workforce access, difficult recruitment and retention, and lower morale and productivity among employees.
But there are solutions!
Implementing commuter benefits can expand your labor pool by providing access for people lacking their own transportation. Commuter benefits can also improve morale and productivity by helping your employees commute with less stress and a lower cost. Less stressful commute can help prevent commute burnout.
Listed below are just a few of the commuter benefits you can offer to help improve your company's recruitment and retention:
- Provide information and ridematching services for carpools and vanpools.
- Implement a Guaranteed Ride Home program. Support your employees' decisions to use commuting alternatives such as carpools and vanpools by making sure they can get home when an emergency arises.
- Provide tax-free transit benefits to help your employees cover the cost of commuting on Metrorail, VRE, MARC, local and commuter buses, and vanpools. Tax-free transit benefits save you money in payroll taxes, and encourage your employees to use forms of transportation other than driving alone.