As part of our survey of 400+ HR professionals for the State of Commuter Benefits Report, we asked them about their employees' work locations, in order to see if that impacted what commuter benefits they offered, or the enrollment rates of those benefits. A significant number of HR practitioners surveyed said they've moved away from exclusively working in-office — 35.1% indicated their teams are hybrid, and 5.6% said they're fully remote. These working patterns, while not new, have grown in popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic. They present an interesting question to HR, facilities, and sustainability teams: if employees aren’t going to the office as much as they used to, or at all, should they get commuter benefits? And for distributed or hybrid teams, is administering benefits across multiple locations more difficult? 

We know the answer to the former question–while hybrid and remote employees may be going to the office less, there are still plenty of reasons to offer commuter benefits. Hybrid employees are still going into an office, teams that are remote may still be operating in areas that have commuter benefits mandate, employers with strong ESG principles prioritize sustainable commutes during work travel, and in a competitive job market, benefits can often be part of the decision about where an employee chooses to work–just to name a few.

We found that 89% of the remote & hybrid employers surveyed are currently offering commuter benefits, and 84% of those programs are subsidized. That’s slightly higher than our overall survey (85% offering benefits, with 82% of them being subsidized).  Enrollment numbers–the amount of employees utilizing the program–are about the same (67% of remote & hybrid employees enrolled, versus 69% in-person).

Of the transit benefits available, surveyed employers indicated that transit passes are the most popular offering. Flexible commuter debit cards rank second, as the cards allow them to offer a variety of transit benefits wherever their distributed teams may live, without juggling different bulk ordering processes manually across transit agencies. Meanwhile, in-person employers are more likely to offer on-site parking for commuters. 

Administration challenges tend to remain the same whether an employee is remote, hybrid, or in-person. The top three challenges across all types of working environments include difficulties related to working with HR systems or IT to implement the program, the time it takes to answer employee questions about the program, and the time or effort it takes to administer the program. Meanwhile, remote and hybrid employers may see a bit more difficulty with effectively delivering benefits, while  in-person employers may struggle more with ​​technical difficulties within the benefits platform.

When asked to rate their employees’ potential excitement over different commuter benefits offerings, work location had no bearing. A flexible commuter debit card was ranked the most exciting, followed by transit passes and rideshare. 

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Takeaways & TL;DR:

• If you don’t offer commuter benefits to your remote or hybrid employees, there’s a high chance your benefits offering is not as competitive as other employers in your field.
• HR teams are spending slightly more time addressing employee questions about commuter benefits when they’re remote, but rate the overall burden of administering the program a 47, versus in-person at 50.
• No matter where employees work, they’re excited about flexible commuter debit cards and transit passes. 

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