5 common problems in corporate parking management

For the person in charge of company parking management, this task can quickly become complex on a daily basis. We have identified 5 recurring problems that we observe among our customers and we give you the keys to remedy them.

There are not enough places for all employees

In practice, yes, you are right. However, it is not necessary to give each employee a dedicated space. The best thing is to share them between all employees. Indeed, with teleworking, travel, holidays… you will rarely see all your employees on site at the same time. Moreover, between people coming by public transport, on foot or by carpooling for example, the number of places really needed is even smaller. Of course, this depends on where your company is located : in the Paris region, where public transport is highly favoured, the ratio of the number of employees per seat may be higher than in a medium-sized city where private cars are more widely used.

The solution may therefore be to rent spaces in a nearby car park. However, this represents a significant cost : on average, it costs €1,500 to €2,000 per year to rent a space. Another solution is to encourage your employees to use alternative modes of transport by communicating about carpooling, by reimbursing all or part of their public transport tickets, etc. In this way, fewer employees will need a seat, which will limit the problem.

Many assigned spaces are unoccupied every day

Generally, company car parks operate with an allocation of free spaces and allocated spaces. However, if the holder of the space is absent one day due to teleworking, travel or simply holidays, the space remains unused without any possibility for other employees to use it. This can lead to frustration for the employee who will not have any parking spaces but will see available but inaccessible spaces.

To remedy this problem, you have two solutions:

Remove all the named spaces and make them all freely accessible : this is not the option we recommend, as it is difficult to remove the parking space of a director or a member of the Comex.
Sharing parking spaces : the aim is to set up a system allowing a holder to declare the days when he or she will not be using his or her space and for an employee to reserve it. This type of solution can be created internally but will quickly become time-consuming and cumbersome for the person in charge of this mission. The best option is to use a dedicated solution that will centralise requests and automatically allocate spaces, as Sharvy does!

Access control to the car park raises many security issues

Access control is an important issue for a company. It must ensure the security of its building and its employees. The company car park, especially when it is underground, is an entry point to the company. So it is essential to monitor who enters it, who parks there… Access control must therefore be effective without being too restrictive for the employee. The most commonly used system is the badge, but it can be exchanged between people, allowing people who do not need to enter to access it… Moreover, badges can be lost or stolen. These non-dematerialised systems can therefore lead to security problems.

The best access control solutions are those that are dematerialised and allow the barrier to be opened only if the person has a named or reserved place on the day. This is particularly the case for cameras with plate recognition which, if they know the number plate in front of the barrier, will open it. In addition, this type of solution is much more flexible and less time-consuming for the facility manager or the people in charge of the car park.

Multi-site parking management is a real headache

The most complicated thing when a company has several sites is to harmonise the management of these sites in order to facilitate the mobility of employees. Indeed, an employee who moves to another site must not feel lost and must be able to find his or her bearings easily. This means having a single management system for all sites, and a single access control system. And this obviously involves harmonised management of all its car parks.

And to answer this question, digital solutions are perfect: an employee will be able to come and go between the different sites of the company very easily, and thus keep his habits. Moreover, it saves time for the company, which will not have to create temporary badges to access the spaces, or deal with emails requesting spaces or access…

Management company car park is time consuming

Finally, parking management can be very time-consuming for the person in charge of this mission. Indeed, between visitor access requests, employees needing a space, company turnover which implies redistributing the available spaces… the task can quickly become difficult to manage and time-consuming.

Some companies decide to build in-house solutions such as Excel spreadsheets to manage the allocation of spaces. But this is time consuming and needs to be updated regularly. At Sharvy, and other similar companies, we offer a turnkey digital solution where employees can reserve or release their spaces in 2 clicks via a web and mobile application. Spaces are then allocated automatically according to pre-defined priority rules. No action on the part of the team in charge of the parking management is necessary, which represents a significant time saving for them.