Why it’s time to ease, rather than earn the commute

Time for a re-think

Escaping our transactional relationship with the commute begins by escaping our understanding of where the workday begins. What it was like ‘getting in’ forms a major part of how we review our day with family, friends, and colleagues, but there’s a lot to be gained from making it an open conversation with employers who have the opportunity to make the journey an easier one.

This is what the Workplace Strategy team at Peldon Rose seeks to achieve when working with businesses to design their real estate strategy and determine what they need from a new or updated office. We’ve found that, when you engage with employees about their commute, it adds a further dimension to support a successful real estate strategy. This process is indispensable when a business relocates, and our team often carries out postcode and journey analysis to understand where employees are coming from and what effect the new address will have on attendance.

But what does this mean in practice? When employers consider the range of ways their employees commute, it can instigate the launch of business-specific bus services or influence the installation of parking spaces, with or without electric charging spots. In theory, it could even extend to businesses working more closely with local authorities to install better lighting around a common walk home or improving the most highly trodden paths to the office. These measures are the attention to detail that enable that final design to have the biggest impact for the most people.

Flexible by nature

This isn’t just an opportunity for employers in the process of overhauling their workplace, nor does it always require deep pockets. We can all look after the commute by fully embracing the inherent, but often untapped, flexibility of hybrid working. Hybrid enables us to flex when as well as where we work, and this has the potential to transform the commuting experience.

While office travel continues to lag behind pre-pandemic levels, travel for leisure has outstripped them, suggesting that it’s not travelling that we don’t like, it’s commuting. So far, our epiphany regarding our ability to work outside of the office has occurred very much within our understanding of the traditional working day, but flexible working in terms of working hours and location is an opportunity to escape the stresses of travelling at rush hour.

Commuting becomes a much more attractive proposition when it’s supported by flexible working and doesn’t have to compete with other factors like the school run or, in London, the commutes of 6 million other people. Embracing hybrid and agile working beyond the office/remote binary allows the workforce to choose a travel time that works for them, which will significantly reduce the negative impact of the commute, and lead to employees arriving at work happier and healthier.

Transition time

It's in our interest, as creators of workplace experiences, to engage with employers to safeguard the value of the commute as a personal space between home and work, because it directly impacts how users evaluate the spaces we design. Currently, our most high-quality and productive office designs are book-ended with a stressful, expensive, and carbon-intensive commute, and this plays into overall employee experience.

If we can reduce the pressure on the commute, we can carve out space for it to be something positive. Research from the Rutgers School of Business has found that the commute is where our thoughts and behaviours shift between work and home, and we’re able to switch between the two different roles we play in each setting because for a moment we occupy neither, providing moments of respite and reflection. The beneficial aspects of the commute shouldn’t be undervalued, and nor should measures that make this process a calmer and easier one.

So, let’s design office experiences compatible with a different kind of commute. Providing end-of-trip facilities (showers, storage, and drying cupboards) for people who run or bike to work enables active commutes and cuts down on carbon, as does installing charging points for electric vehicles. Peldon Rose’s manifesto for the planet-first workplace explains how making space for the active commute can be a catalyst for more sustainable behaviour in employees when they get to the office. Providing that choice now will speak volumes and will help to positively nudge behaviour into the future.

Real progress

How people experience the workplace begins long before they step through the door. The rise of hybrid has introduced flexibility when it comes to where we work, but questions of when we work, particularly in terms of when we commute, have largely fallen through the cracks. By shifting to a model that provides employees with choice of when and how they commute, businesses can create a workplace culture that, from the moment they leave home to the time they return, works for everyone.

The transactional approach to ‘earning the commute’ isn’t sustainable – it only kicks the can down the road when we have the power to make it a force for good in working life.