How are you onboarding your employees in your green mobility policy?

Segment your diverse workforce into personae by understanding the main drivers of their mobility behaviour.

When organizations offer a company car to their employees, they not only provide them with a salary in kind, it often becomes an integral part of their private life. For example as a way to get family life organized or as a token of prestige. Therefore, in the journey of redesigning their mobility strategy it is important for companies to connect with their employees both on a professional or rational level as well as on a personal or emotional level. Just as if they would be selling a service to a client. Only then will they be able to trigger a positive change in their employees’ mindset, which is a crucial factor for a successful transformation towards greener mobility solutions.

A good technique to get a deep understanding of both the rational and emotional drivers of employees comes from the world of user experience design, called personae.

Why do you need to know your company’s personae?

Personae are fictional characters that represent like-minded segments in your workforce. They will help you understand the particular needs, drivers and behaviours of a diverse workforce relating to mobility.

Moreover, if done well, your employees will be able to identify themselves with these personae. This is a crucial step. Most employees support the idea of a more sustainable mobility, in fact they even expect their employer to lead by example and pave the way. However, when put in practice, they will find a million reasons not to change their current mobility habits. They will come up with arguments to block and not to change, rather than seeing the opportunities.

Yet, by sharing inspirational stories about new and alternative mobility solutions by people your employees can relate to directly, they will in turn better relate to the situation and the need for a new and improved mobility policy. This will make the step to change considerably smaller to take.

How do you identify the different personae?

Data, data and more data. It is crucial to collect data from different sources when trying to cluster your employees. This is because an employee's personal situation, their needs and their preferences are the result of a combination of various clusters. As far as mobility choices are concerned, socio-demographic details are one of the key drivers. Our private lives are immediately and enormously affected by the mobility choices we make. And vice-versa we make certain mobility choices out of very personal considerations, whether we do or don’t have children, how old these children are etc. These socio-demographic characteristics will drive our different choices regarding our commuting behaviour and preferred way of travel.

The place of residence and the localization of the workforce and the companies' premises is a second key driver of commuting behaviour. For example, employees who have easy access to public transport or shared mobility services are more likely to replace their company car for a train subscription or an electric step. On the other hand, employees living further from the office or with less access to public transport alternatives might prefer to keep their company car as primary means of transportation.

Multiple other parameters contribute to an individual's needs regarding their mobility preferences and behaviour. One’s individual mobility budget might be a quantifiable parameter but one’s character is not. However, whether you are open-minded or conservative, the adventurous type or more laid back, also help to identify you as one or another personae. This data can be collected via surveys sent out to the employees that inquire into their background and preferences and can be supplemented with deeper insights by organizing focus groups workshops.

Conclusion

To drive successful adoption on your new green mobility policy, you cannot just plug and pray. Just like a service provider, you will have to understand the needs of your clients, get them to connect with your product and use brand ambassadors to boost the adoption. Although it will take extra effort to create personae, it will give you valuable insights and provide your employees with an inspirational story they can relate to.

Our next article will share more insights on the electrification process of companies’ car fleets while clarifying several tricky questions about charging stations and their installation process on organizations’ premises and in employees' homes.