Aegon Spain shares its 74 parking spaces between 500 employees and manages to respond favourably to 74% of parking space reservation requests thanks to Sharvy.

Context of Aegon

Founded in 1983, Aegon is a Dutch insurance company present in America, Europe and Asia. The company’s Spanish head office is located in Madrid and has been experiencing parking problems for some years. With 74 parking spaces for 500 employees, the task of accommodating as many people as possible can quickly become complex! That said, Aegon’s goal in Spain is to become the best place to work for its employees, trying to create the best experience during their time in the office.

Before Covid, employees came to the office every day, and parking spaces were allocated by name and paid for by monthly subscription. Also, more parking spaces were available. Then, after the pandemic, a hybrid model was introduced, with working from home authorised 3 days a week for the majority of employees. However, this quickly revealed a flaw in the parking management system that was in use. Therefore, the Human Resources department, in coordination with the General Services team, began to think about a system for sharing spaces to enable all employees to benefit from the car park. Ensuring that the rotation of spots was as fair as possible considering the limited space for parking cars.

An initial solution was put in place, but it worked on a “first come, first served” basis. In other words, the first people who made their reservations received a spot. So, when the calendar opened at 12pm, everyone stopped what they were doing to make their reservations. This posed a problem of fairness for employees who were not available at that time. That’s why Aegon wanted a fairer system for all its employees. Sharvy, with its algorithm for allocating parking spaces more equitably, was identified and selected by the company.

Setting up of Sharvy

After initial discussions and a demonstration, it became clear that Sharvy, company car park management solution, was the perfect answer to Aegon’s sharing and equity issues. The Human Resources department therefore selected the solution with a view to starting collaboration in June 2024 and launching Sharvy in September of the same year. A project team was set up at Aegon, comprising Human Resources, IT for integration with Single Sign On, and the team in charge of Workday, the HRIS used at Aegon which is also connected to the application.

First of all, the company has revamped its parking policy. Of the 74 parking spaces on the site, only 15 remain nominative. The 15 holders must release their spaces in Sharvy when they are away from the office, to make them available to their colleagues.

Also, priority allocation rules have been introduced to favour certain categories of employee in obtaining a place. This applies in particular to people with reduced mobility, pregnant women, car-poolers and managers.

Sharvy offers two types of algorithm, but Aegon has opted for the fair algorithm. It’s no longer a question of speed at the time of reservation. Places are allocated a few days before the big day, according to the number of spaces obtained in the past. So, if only one place remains available, the algorithm will favor the requester who has received the fewest spots in recent days ( with equal profile and priority level).

In addition, the adoption of the solution has been facilitated by the interface with Workday, the HRIS used at Aegon. This connection enables users to be created automatically in the event of recruitment, or deleted in the event of leaving.

Aegon Favourite Features

Benefits noted

Parking had been a major issue at Aegon for years. Thanks to Sharvy, the perception of parking has changed. In the annual satisfaction survey, parking was a constant negative point. In the latest questionnaire, sent out a few months after Sharvy was introduced, this issue came up but it was more related to the lack of parking spots than to the algorithm which has increased the feeling of fairness. What’s more, the criteria of the algorithm are also clear and understood by employees.

Demand is very high and unfortunately the car park is still not able to satisfy all requests. However, whereas before only 15% of employees had access to the car park (as holders of a space), 74% of requests for spaces are now satisfied on average on a daily basis.

All spaces are allocated every day, with the exception of Friday, which is generally a quieter day. Indeed, the car park’s occupancy rate is now close to 100%. Without a space-sharing solution like Sharvy and with teleworking in place at the company, the occupancy rate would have been much lower.

Initially, some people forgot to vacate their spaces or cancel their bookings if they were unexpectedly absent from the office. As the weeks went by, and after a few discussions to educate employees about good practice, this problem became less and less frequent.

Do you need to optimise your company car park? Do you want to modernise its management and make it fairer?

Follow the lead of Aegon and opt for Sharvy!