Employee welfare also comes through mobility

Once upon a time, there was simple fleet management. Those were other times, when one could also be content with finding the easiest way to get from point A to point B. Today the scenario is quite different and mobility is increasingly a lever that companies can exploit to attract talent and take care of their well-being. 68% of Italian companies have already implemented or are working towards a sustainable mobility strategy. Such changes, however, are probably easier said than done. There are, in fact, a number of barriers standing in the way of companies moving in this direction, in particular internal resistance (in 34% of cases), the lack of a dedicated budget (21%) and difficulties in choosing the most suitable solutions to propose (19%). The result is that for one in four companies in Italy the support of a specific consultancy on the topic would play a relevant role in the implementation of the various mobility solutions.

Those just described are among the main findings emerging from the new survey by the Arval Mobility Observatory, the independent research centre promoted by Arval whose aim is to observe, analyse and anticipate the most interesting mobility trends. The study 'Mobility Benefit: new horizons of corporate mobility between employee wellbeing and sustainability', carried out in collaboration with the Econometrica study centre, involved more than 200 Italian companies active in the adoption of mobility solutions, investigating how sustainability strategies and employee travel-related welfare programmes are being introduced within companies.

More specifically, the analysis focused on mobility managers, the corporate figure in charge of developing strategies for more sustainable and efficient mobility, particularly for home-work journeys. Their mission is to promote alternatives to the use of private cars, but also to optimise mobility flows and contribute more generally to the company's environmental and economic objectives. Already foreseen at the end of the 1990s and then relaunched recently, with the introduction of the obligation to appoint them in companies and public administrations with at least one hundred employees in capitals, metropolitan cities or municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, today the role of the mobility manager is central to planning actions aimed at reducing emissions, costs and traffic, with attention also paid to the well-being of employees and the company's image.

As mentioned, mobility policies used to focus on fleet management alone, whereas companies now use mobility as a strategic lever to achieve key corporate objectives such as sustainability, employee focus and cost control. Yet, according to the Arval survey, in only 27% of cases did companies appoint a mobility manager 'exclusively': in the remaining 73%, the same person is also a fleet manager. The figure of the mobility manager is in most cases placed within Human Resources, underlining the growing importance in terms of employee focus.

Among the mobility solutions, current and future, that are most at the centre of Italian companies' strategies are subsidised or free parking spaces on the premises: 65% of the sample have already implemented them (57%) or will do so in the next two to three years (8%). But projects for the installation of private bike racks or shelters (55%), car sharing (34%), local public transport season ticket reimbursement (30%), carpooling (28%) and company shuttles (23%) are also well underway. As the Arval study points out, the focus is gradually shifting from a focus on private mobility to a greater openness to shared mobility, widening the spectrum of beneficiaries to all company employees. A sore point, already mentioned above, is that of budgets. Rarely today are mobility solutions supported by allocated resources that favour their implementation. In 40% of Italian companies, the use of mobility budgets is approved by the HR management, while in 13% of cases decisions are taken directly by the general manager of the company.