Managerial math: Parking Problem

How to split parking among employees? Posted by Lena Barinova on July 5, 2014 Know-how

I bet lots of companies have to solve a “Parking” problem, especially those, who are located in the city. The definition of the problem is such:

parking sign

Given X amount of parking lots available near the office and Y amount of employees driving cars to work (where Y>X), what is the most fair way to split parking lots to employees.

In other words who gets parking? There are obviously lots of approaches to split parking lots: run a lottery, give away parking as an extrinsic motivation, wrap it in a proposal package, give according to the work status (managers, seniors, leads) or social status (large families, single mums, long commuters) etc.

So how have we solved this problem? We sorted all employees (who need a parking) by starting date and gave parking lots to top X employees from this list.

In addition to that we have an app, developed during one of our Hackathons (I am proud being a part of the creators group :)). Using this app anyone who doesn’t need a parking - may share it, and one who does need it (but does not have it) may take it. This way those who are assigned with parking may share it during vacations, business trips, sick days, etc.

This is a common problem, but there is no one best solution for it. How do you split your parking?