The national average price of regular gasoline has surpassed $4 per gallon and we are all feeling the pressure. Your customers drive less, spend more money on gas and less on other products. Your suppliers are charging more to cover the cost of transportation, and those costs are likely to be passed on to your own customers. If you have a delivery arm for your business, you’ve probably also had to increase the price to cover the increases. However, have you considered the expenses of your own employees? How much does it cost them to get to and from work each day, or more specifically, what percentage of their income should now be devoted to commuting, and what can you as an employer do to ease the pain caused by -increasing car prices? fuels?

The four-day work week

Consider the employee who earns $500 a week and has been with your company since gas was $2 a gallon. Assuming an 18-gallon gas tank, when they were hired, the price to get to and from work was $36. That means their take-home pay, minus the amount they pay to travel each week, is $464. Today, with gas at $4 a gallon, that same tank of gas costs $72, leaving you $428, and that’s before taxes! Can they afford to work for you at that salary with so much of their income going into your gas tank?

Enter the four-day work week. By going from five 8-hour days to four 10-hour days, that same employee can save a significant 20% or about $14.40 on gas each week. Savings like that could equate to a free tank of gas every five weeks.

telecommuting

Telecommuting is an alternative to voluntary work in which the employee carries out his work in a place other than the office, usually at home. The impact of this arrangement can be similar to the 4-day week or much more profound depending on the number of days the employee works from home. Obviously, the more days you work from home, the greater the savings in fuel costs. The key to making this work is that the employee’s outside work environment should be a place with minimal distractions that is conducive to getting the job done. They need to have a computer and an Internet connection, access to the company network, or at least their own work PC, a business phone, and any other special items that may be required for their job. For some, this might involve an initial out-of-pocket expense, but that would be easily offset by savings.

While telecommuting is not appropriate for all jobs, for those who can (certain professionals, administrative staff, sales staff, and executives) it has certain benefits including lower fuel costs and less time in voluntary solitary confinement (VSC). for its acronym in English) of their cars -with all the mechanical wear and tear that this implies- staring at the back of the head of the VSC inmate in front of you.

shared trips

Putting together a rideshare program is an excellent alternative to changing work schedules and locations. As long as the carpool members are reasonably close to each other and work similar or identical hours, then there should be no problem. It can be as easy as advertising the program and its benefits to your employees and creating a sign-in sheet for rideshare assignments.

One thing you should definitely point out when introducing such a program is the fact that ridesharing is a great way to reduce the cost of travel, something that’s on everyone’s mind these days. To give you an idea of ​​the kind of savings your employees could enjoy with a rideshare agreement, Long Island Transportation Management, Inc., developed a handy calculator [http://www.litm.org/cost.htm]. Assuming your full-time employee’s car gets 20 MPG on a 50-mile round trip, your cost per mile for maintenance, taxes, etc. is typical and who pay about $125 a month for parking, the estimated annual cost of driving alone to work is $10,383. Carpooling with another employee brings that down to $5,191.50; with two others it is $2,595.75 and with three, the annual cost of commuting to work is $1,730.50.

Public transport

As an employer, your local public transportation system may offer a variety of programs and alternatives for your employees. One such program in the Chicago area is called the Transit Benefit Fare Program.

According to the Illinois Regional Transportation Authority, the Transit Benefit Fare Program is a low-cost or no-cost benefit for both employers and employees that allows employees to pay for transportation using pre-tax income in amounts of up to $115 per month ($1,380 per year). Employers have the option of subsidizing this benefit for their employees and, if so, at what level. Regardless, the result would be a reduction in taxes for both the employee and the employer, while employees could purchase various types of means of payment that can be used to get to and from work. Similar programs can be found across the country and go a long way toward making travel easier and much less expensive than driving alone.

The bottom line

Whether it’s helping get public transportation, organizing rideshares, or changing the work environment, whether it’s through telecommuting or a shorter workweek, the fact that you’re trying to take important steps to help your employees in these times Difficult high energy prices will have a marked effect on your workforce. Studies from the early decades of the 20th century showed that workers performed better, showed higher productivity, simply because management paid attention to them. This is an opportunity for you to pay attention to something real and challenging in their lives. You won’t be disappointed with the results.