The Growing Importance of Solving Commute

(Excerpts from a blog post published by our team at getvoy.com on Oct 30, 2018.)

Commuting sucks

Let’s face it — commuting sucks. According to the Washington Post, it now takes the average worker 26 minutes, in each direction, to travel to work — up 20% since 1980. Perhaps not surprising, people hate their commutes more than just about any other activity in their lives. Daniel Kahneman — a Nobel laureate — and Alan Krueger asked a group of 900 women how they enjoyed various daily activities. The morning commute came in dead-last — behind work, child care, and home chores.

Why you should act now

Hasn’t commuting always been terrible?

Yes. Expensive urban housing drives people further away from where they work, increasing the overall commute. Many commuters find themselves having to tackle the issue alone — having to weigh choices between flexibility, cost, speed and relaxation to navigate the best way to work. The result: frustrations behind the wheel, missed transit connections, stress and employees who arrive at work exhausted when the day has only just begun.

…Given this context, the most employee-centric companies are developing robust benefits to support their employees’ commutes — from commute subsidies, to support with carpooling, to private shuttles and ridehail credits. Standards and expectations are being set that will soon become common workplace benefits. For a quick survey of commute benefits, Fast Company released a great perspective in October 2018.

In the coming weeks, our team at Voy will dive into how these forward-thinking companies are designing commute benefits to best support their talent strategy. Stay tuned and join our mailing list at getvoy.com to be the first to learn about what you can do to solve commuting.