- An opportunity to expand corporate mobility management: FREE NOW is responding to the growing demand for flexible, alternative and sustainable mobility offers with a mobility budget
- More than a job ticket or company car: Employees can use the mobility budget for the available alternatives: taxis, PHVs, as well as eScooters, eMopeds and car sharing
- Exclusive FREE NOW survey together with Civey: After the Covid-19 pandemic, one in two employees (51 per cent) wants to make their own mobility more flexible; there is particularly high approval for this in German metropolitan areas
- The FREE NOW mobility budget will first be launched in Germany, and will then be used throughout Europe
Hamburg, 7 July 2021 - FREE NOW, Europe's leading mobility platform, will be offering an alternative to the company car: preferring to travel to work by eScooter or via carsharing is the watchword of many employees - especially after the Covid-19 crisis. An exclusive FREE NOW survey together with Civey shows that after the Covid-19 pandemic, one in two employees (51 per cent) wants to make their own mobility more flexible; there is particularly high approval for this in German metropolitan areas.
This is why FREE NOW for Business will now be broadening its own product portfolio to include a mobility budget for companies and will be offering business customers new alternatives to fleet management with company cars. Using the FREE NOW app, employees can use a monthly budget and flexibly book all mobility alternatives available in their city, such as taxis, PHVs, eScooters, eMopeds or car sharing.
The FREE NOW mobility budget will initially be widely trialed in Germany before being subsequently rolled out across borders and in other European countries.
Mobility Budget: An advantage in the competition for young talent
Alexander Mönch, General Manager of FREE NOW Germany, says: "City dwellers and commuters are looking for reliable, convenient mobility services that they can link up in a sensible, flexible way. At FREE NOW, we offer exactly this benefit with our app and our multi mobility partners in many cities within Germany. We also support companies in becoming overall more sustainable with a mobility budget for their staff, thereby extending the company's own sustainability guidelines to fleet management too."
According to a recent Mercer survey, in response to the question of which types of benefits employees find fairly or very important, mobility (71%) is the most important, not far behind health benefits (77%) and training and development (84%). This is one way in which companies can set themselves apart from the competition if, when vying for young talent, they rely on flexible models that combine day-to-day and professional mobility, at the same time incorporating sustainable considerations. "Especially in cities, this offers new opportunities to reduce individual motorized transport, and to address the most pressing challenges such as lack of space, traffic and emissions, so contributing to the success of the transport transformation," Mönch continues.
Despite or maybe because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Kristen Herde, Managing Director of the recruitment agency yeaHR, adds: “Mobility is on the way back, but differently. There will be a boom in the autumn, the demand for skilled workers will increase, and companies will have to diversify. They need to be digital, they need to have a solid sustainability strategy, they need to live the 'New Way of Working' and support their staff in doing so. FREE NOW's mobility budget is a response to all the current megatrends in the world of work. When it comes to employer branding, we can only advise every company to start implementing it now."
About FREE NOW:
FREE NOW is the multi-service mobility joint venture from BMW and Daimler. In addition to ride-hailing, FREE NOW also offers micromobility services such as eScooters, eBikes, eMopeds and Carsharing. It consists of the FREE NOW (ten European markets) and Βeat (five Latin American markets and one European market) verticals. Together, the verticals are currently used by 50 million users in 16 markets and over 150 cities and 30,000 corporate clients. This makes FREE NOW the largest multi-service mobility provider in Europe and the fastest growing ride-hailing platform in Latin America. FREE NOW is working with several third party providers to give its customers an even wider choice of options for getting from point A to point B. FREE NOW employs a total of around 1,900 people in 35 different locations around the world. FREE NOW's CEO is Marc Berg.
More information at: https://free-now.com/de/
FREE NOW Press Contact:
FREE NOW
Jana Tilz
Director of Communications
P: +49 (0) 160 95161455
E: jana.tilz@free-now.com
7 July 2021
