The research argues that COVID-19 has led to a significant change in mobility habits.
Flexible, personalized, and safe means of travel have come to the foreground, such as carsharing: according to the research of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, after the first wave of the pandemic, the usage of carsharing has increased by 45%in Europe compared to the previous year.
Free-floating carsharing, where cars are available 24 hours a day in walking distance, is mainly used for attending business meetings and commuting by the Hungarian corporations whose representatives were asked in the research of SHARE NOW and Wallis Motor in March. The nearly 500 respondents are active in numerous sectors of the economy, such as the service industry (15%), construction (13%), and IT (10%). More than one third of the respondents (37%) has stated, that the pandemic affected their headcount and most of them (70%) reported a decrease. Some 64% of the respondents reported the introduction of remote working, moreover, in 34% of the companies, colleagues spend more than three days a week working from home.
Because of the latter, a hybrid work schedule appeared at numerous companies. Only 17% of the respondents used carsharing for commuting, while almost a quarter of them (24%) use it to attend business meetings. Many users go on trips to the countryside with these cars (14%) and some use it for their work on a daily basis (11%).
About 51% of the respondents have already used, or are planning to use carsharing in the future, which is not affected by having a corporate fleet. There is also no difference throughout different business sizes in openness to carsharing, perceived- and highest-rated benefits. Close to 20% of business users appreciate the simplicity and flexibility of the service, followed by cost-effectiveness (16%) and simple bookkeeping (15%).
"It is great to see, that more than 10% of the respondents consider carsharing as an employee benefit," states Bence Buday, the managing director of SHARE NOW Hungary.
The research argues that this mobility solution for corporations can be easily adapted to existing solutions: the employee declares the amount of the available cafeteria funds they would like to use for carsharing, after which the claimed and approved amount is given to the employee as credits.
Alongside the cafeteria-based solution SHARE NOW can also create a corporate account for partnered medium and large enterprises. Up-to-date information about all trips (starting and ending dates, incurred costs) can be monitored on the corporation’s administrative interface, where all employees’ usage can be managed. Costs are incurred in form of a monthly invoice, with corporate discounts, meaning that the partner only pays for the amount that the users have driven, without any extra costs.
"We have reached the point, where corporations are choosing carsharing based on a well-understood business interest. This process was the same for Western Europe a few years ago, where corporate carsharing became a normal business practice," mentions Buday.
