RHR 160: Easing Employee's Transportation Barriers with Ryan McManus

Ryan McManus: 0:00

One of the things we're seeing and the Federal Transportation Administration has verified this. They put out a stat last year that said low income Americans are spending 37% of their household income on transportation. And when we look at the data, we see that there are employees that are spending 40% or more Wow, of their post tax income just to get to work. Imagine spending like the first two or three hours of the day just working to pay for the ride that got you there.

Kyle Roed: 0:25

Yeah, that's a lot. This is the rebel HR Podcast, the podcast where we talk to HR innovators about all things people leadership. If you're looking for places to find about new ways to think about the world of work, this is the podcast for you. Please subscribe and your favorite podcast listening platform today. And leave us a review revelon HR rebels Welcome back rebel HR listeners, this is going to be a fun conversation with an innovative way to think about removing barriers for employees. Today with us we have Ryan McManus, he is the CEO and founder of share, mobility share mobility eliminates the transportation barrier to employment for hourly workers to help make sure that your goals can be met, and human resources with us. We also have Molly Bradesco. Molly welcome as well.

Molly Burdess: 1:14

Thanks. Hi, guys.

Kyle Roed: 1:16

Ryan, welcome to the show. The first question that I have for you, is what prompted you to focus on commuter benefits?

Ryan McManus: 1:25

Thanks, Kyle, it's great to chat with you in Mali about this. So share was started in a unique way, where we knew we wanted to be a part of the automotive industries transformation, we didn't know what problem we were going to go after. And I was really inspired by what was happening with car sharing and electrification and some early autonomous vehicle technology that Tesla was using. And it just saw that the automotive industry was transforming. And I wanted to be a part of that. And so in 2016, I received a small investment from Jaguar Land Rover, and they gave us six months $80,000 And we moved to Portland, Oregon, where we worked in their incubator to try to develop new technology that could advance the automotive industry and its transformation into mobility. At the time, I thought, you know, we're going to build things that take people out of cars, maybe and and help them better better utilize electric vehicles and help with with sharing. And what I found was that there's a huge population of people that don't have reliable transportation today, and if we build our business for them, that's where the biggest opportunity lies.

Kyle Roed: 2:39

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, certainly I've seen it in my organization. Molly, I'm sure you've probably seen this too. It's, it's, you know, transportation can be a barrier. For many people. And a lot of times it's, it's a hidden barrier, you know, we don't necessarily know about it, when it makes it into a job offer. And we see it after somebody starts or after somebody's ride falls through, and now we start to have attendance issues or turnover issues. So I am assuming that that you are you see that with your product? And I'm curious what what you have seen work as it relates to your, your benefit?

Ryan McManus: 3:17

Yeah. When we first started doing employee transportation, we worked with a variety of different companies from staffing to corporate headquarters, but a lot of the work was taking people from the suburbs into the city, and taking them out of the car they already had, and helping them have a productive commute or maybe save some money. During COVID, we were able to focus on who was still moving to work. And we found that frontline workers had the greatest need for transportation, and not just a need from it'd be nice to have or it could save them some money. But there were jobs, they could not reach the their jobs they could not say yes to because they didn't have access to public transportation or a car of their own.

Kyle Roed: 4:05

Yeah, I mean, that is exactly what I have seen in multiple organizations that I've worked at, you know, in my sectors manufacturing, so a lot of times the shifts start before transportation starts right public transportation, or the bus route doesn't get there, you know, close enough to the facility because it's an industrial park not a you know, not not like a city center, right. So so how do you how do you partner with with organizations that are having this problem or or have have observed this struggle, how to share mobility partner with those, those business partners?

Ryan McManus: 4:42

So almost every organization that we meet, anecdotally knows that their employees have transportation problems, but they don't have hard data to really know what that problem is or quantify it. And they don't understand why they should pay for employee transportation you know today that can mute is totally on the individual, you get a job, you've got to figure it out, you pay for it himself yourself. And so from a company's perspective, historically, they've never had to do anything about transportation. So why should they start now. But it's becoming clearer and clearer with frontline workers that whether it's childcare, or transportation or some other barrier, the employers are having to do more, if they want to fill those open jobs. And the first thing we do with a company is we try to help them understand if there is a transportation problem, we'll be the first ones to tell you if all of your employees live close, there's lots of public transit available and it serves your workforce. Well, what we do is we ask for a data file of where all of the employees live. And then that gets input into our software. And for the first time for HR, we map out where all their employees live, we help them understand who's commuting really far, who's spending a large portion of their income, commuting, and who's a turnover risk. And at the same time, look at demographic information, density information, unemployment data, and find areas where they can be recruiting, if transportation is offered, many times there are neighborhoods that a company would love to recruit in. But they know that public transit can't get people to the door, or their community where there might be 20 to 30% of households with zero car ownership. And for a manufacturer, that's the exact neighborhood you need to reach into to be able to hire your employees. And so by what we it's called a commuter analysis, we do this commuter analysis for companies so that they can understand the problem that exists. And then we show them how, by filling their open jobs with employees that just need transportation, they can increase their workforce productivity, by as much as 18 times more than the cost of transportation.

Molly Burdess: 7:02

That's fascinating. I love that concept. They're just collecting my dad, I think that's something that a lot of companies should be doing that probably are not. I'm curious, from a large scale, what what are some of that data that you found really eye opening?

Ryan McManus: 7:19

So how far people come? That's one that's really, really eye opening? In who's crossing a county line. So anytime employees in the United States cross the county line, you can almost guarantee that there's no public transit that follows them. And so for employers to help understand their workforce, where are they going for it? Where are they coming from? And what are their costs, that helps them really understand some of the challenges they're seeing, you know, we'll go to a company that will have 40 out of 200 jobs open, they're losing hundreds of 1000s of dollars of productivity. And they don't fully understand that. By putting transportation on the employee, there's a lot of people that are going to be able to take your job.

Molly Burdess: 8:02

I personally crack three county line. So I understand that very well. Yeah, it's a lot of time, you mentioned something earlier, too, you know, you're trying to make a more productive commute and save some people some money. So it's not necessarily about just eliminating barrier. It's also about improving the the employee area and retention and better recruiting.

Ryan McManus: 8:25

Exactly. One of the things we're seeing, and the Federal Transportation Administration has verified this, they put out a stat last year that said low income Americans are spending 37% of their household income on transportation. And when we look at the data, we see that there are employees that are spending 40% or more Wow, of their post tax income, just to get to work. Imagine spending like the first two or three hours of the day just working to pay for the ride that got you there.

Kyle Roed: 8:54

Yeah, that's a lot of net. It's

Molly Burdess: 8:57

a lot.

Kyle Roed: 8:58

It's real, though, it's a real cost. You know, what I what I find really fascinating is, you know, this is a cost to the business. Whether you realize it or not, it's just hidden, right? And and I reflect back to some of the stories from, you know, one of my past employers, we would I can't tell you how many times we would find out that somebody just stopped showing up to work. And it was, you know, and in our system in our HR system, it just shows up as job abandonment, right. And in our typical, you know, thought processes with job abandonment, that's voluntary turnover. You could argue that, you know, quote, good turnover like that's the that's the way that we've been trained to see that data point. But when you actually go and you like, unpack the data, and you understand, Oh, why did this person stop showing up? A lot of times it was one of these issues. It was a they lost daycare. They lost their ride. It was too expensive to get to work. The hours were too early. They couldn't You know, they couldn't get somebody to watch the kid or they couldn't get a ride or both, you know. And so there is a question that an employer should be asking what that data point is, you know, why is there job abandonment? Not? Oh, there is job abandonment, and then you're done with that analysis. So I think this is a fascinating, kind of a challenge, I would say to, to HR professionals to think a little bit differently about these data points.

Ryan McManus: 10:24

You know, good intentions can often lead to unexpected or undesired outcome, and in an effort for HR to avoid and eliminate discrimination, discrimination that could be related to your transportation. People aren't being treated fairly. And we all earn different amounts. jobs pay different amounts, but each employee covers the same burden. An HR holds a little bit of responsibility in this, because every job application you have starts with, do you have reliable transportation, and it's a filtering mechanism. And you're not legally allowed to ask if somebody owns a car, so you can't go and say, like, do you think if could you take this job if we helped you? And because of that question, you're restricted in asking questions that could help you hire somebody could help you overcome their barriers. So I want to challenge HR professionals to eliminate that question from their job application. And what you can do is proactively offer transportation solutions, you never have to ask if they have a car. But if an HR person can say, let me show you some options, might be carpooling. With people that live near you, it might be taking the bus that's available, or it might be subsidizing transportation for the first couple months of employment so they can start getting there. But if HR professionals are able to have a solution for people that don't have transportation, that question becomes irrelevant. You just made me

Kyle Roed: 11:53

put a note down the check my application? I don't think it's on there. But I gotta tell the check now.

Ryan McManus: 11:59

Yep, it's on most of them. And it's the federally legal approved way of asking if somebody has a car or not, and everybody wants to just be a little hands off. But I think there's a solution to be provided.

Molly Burdess: 12:13

Even if it's not on the application, I bet the majority of our managers are asking our hiring manager or acting as well in the interview prep. Yep.

Ryan McManus: 12:24

And what's interesting is that we can predict whether or not somebody has a car, we can predict whether somebody is going to have a transportation need. And we're just using data that the employer could have access to themselves, we've just put it into a product and made it really easy for him.

Kyle Roed: 12:40

And I think it's really interesting. And it's I think it speaks to what we're trying to do with this podcast, which is let's, let's think differently about all of these things that we just do, because it's the way we've always done it. Right. You know, and to your point, you mentioned this earlier, you know, well, we haven't done that this benefit before. Why should we do it now? Well, the honest truth is because the world continues to change. So you need to change with it, right? I mean, here's a great example. I had a at one point, I had a facility down in, in, in Kentucky. And the shift start time was six in the morning. And we were just It was awful. You couldn't hardly hire anybody. Nobody wanted to work there. It was kind of out of the way. Well come to find out it was just the buses didn't start running that route until about 630. So all we had to do was change the start times seven, right? Like change it one hour. And suddenly, we could hire people to pick up people and people were actually showing up on time. And it was like, you know, it's just one of those things where, just because we asked the question, and we dug a little bit deeper, we're able to figure out, oh, this is this is a solvable problem. We can figure this out. Right. But we have to challenge ourselves. So I'm curious, you know, I know you've worked with with a number of different, you know, organizations, and you know, some there's some testimonials from Fortune 500 companies, you know, give us a couple examples of some success stories that you've seen by organizations thinking a little bit differently about this barrier.

Ryan McManus: 14:10

Yeah, are the brands using shared mobility don't like to let us use their name because they see it as a bit of an advantage. But let's stick with Kentucky. In the middle of Kentucky, there are a lot of factory farms. Actually quite a lot of jobs where there are no people. And so we had a large farming producer that came to us and they didn't have enough people to fill their shifts and they were at risk of having to shut the plant down. Within three months, they had filled 90 jobs by having transportation available. And those those employees came through refugee resettlement organizations. So when refugees first come here, they at least for the first 90 days, they don't have a driver's license and it can take them long. longer to establish credit and get in a vehicle. But by having transportation with share mobility, they were able to hire 90 individuals and otherwise couldn't have said yes to the job. And it's become a large percentage of their workforce that's using transportation on a daily basis.

Kyle Roed: 15:17

Absolutely. I think it's a powerful example. And it's, you know, it's not necessarily something we would typically think about. I'm curious, you mentioned this, have you seen companies actually change the recruiting strategy? Because they've identified pockets of available talent, that that just doesn't have consistent and reliable transportation, so they haven't targeted there? Previously? Have you seen that work?

Ryan McManus: 15:42

Yeah, absolutely. This employer I'm mentioning, they had previously only recruited from Bowling Green, which was like, almost an hour away, I believe south. And with transportation, they were able to recruit from another community, 45 minutes north of them, where they had historically never been able to recruit anyone, just because of the income levels in that area, transit, car ownership rates, and how far the commute was. So we've, we've seen companies purchase billboards, using the data we show them to promote that they are hiring. And we encourage them to put transportation provided. When companies put transportation provided we see about a three times increase in applicants. Because more people can say yes to that job, that job becomes far more attractive.

Kyle Roed: 16:36

When it makes sense, you know, that the I think about it, the economics makes sense. If you're spending 30 to 40% of your net take home paycheck just to get to work. That's a decision. mean, that's a decision nobody really wants to be making, right. So if you just told me that, I just got to save that money, just by working at your organization, even if I'm working somewhere, and I might be making slightly more or the same, that's a compelling reason to switch right to go there. And to your point, earlier, and I don't blame this company like this could be a competitive advantage, right. This is how you could win the, you know, the attention and, and some of these, these folks that are you know, struggling with this.

Ryan McManus: 17:21

One, because companies have never done this, we have to prove it out one location at a time. And so this one customer, we've now expanded into four locations with them. And because of our software, we have the ability to manage it across their entire enterprise, and give their executives visibility about their workforce, and all of their locations that they don't have today.

Molly Burdess: 17:44

Can play devil's advocate just for a little bit here. So I've just thinking of what probably the two barriers to employers would be the first one would be cost. Okay, we could make a case on what are you losing by not felony possession by Absolutely. But I would imagine the second one would be liability, like, is there any liability issue with pay for and providing transportation?

Ryan McManus: 18:09

That's such a great question. You're absolutely right on the first one price, because they're not paying for it today, we're always talking about price. But we can overcome that. The liability question is definitely a concern. Not for us, we can overcome it. It's a concern, because companies don't understand it. And sometimes there's somebody in the legal department that goes, now we're going to be liable. It's no different if you drive, or if your employer pays for you to have a ride to work. You are not working during that time, you are not paid during that time, you are not at work. And so if there were to be an accident to happen, workers compensation does not kick in share has a $5 million insurance policy, we are fully fully covered. We have professional drivers there track with telematics, we have industry leading safety. And so for an employer's perspective, it would be risky to try to go and do this on your own. But we provide all of the insurance and risk mitigation so that the company can do this. And as long as you're not mandating work, and paying for time in the vehicle, workers comp is not. Good.

Molly Burdess: 19:17

Guy, thank you for clarifying that. So tell me tell me about the app or the software that you use. I don't know much about it.

Ryan McManus: 19:26

You know, the, the app is all about alleviating the transportation burden from HR. And so we've got tools for an HR manager first, they put in their shift times. Those shift times are what the employees see when they go to book a ride. The HR person also could book rides for their entire team if they wanted to. They can upload a spreadsheet they could book rides for multiple people. But in most cases, what happens is when the employees are hired, they're invited to the benefit pro grant, you are hired. Now you get share mobility, our web app, nothing to download. It's available in nine different languages. So we can support employers with non English speaking workforces. The employees sign up for share, all they're able to do is book a ride to and from that employer based on what the employer is allowing. They choose stop nearby their home, they pick their time, they need to arrive by work at work, and our software, builds the route combines them with other co workers, gives that route to the driver and builds the most efficient route to get those employees from where they live to where they work on time. If it were to snow tomorrow morning, for one of my routes, we would update the pickup time to ensure that we still get them to work on time and incorporate the extra time that snow would would add, if it's rush hour time or route builds that in. And so the employers can trust that everybody is going to show up, they can get a manifest that tells them early if anybody isn't, is not showing up for work, and they can make some adjustments. And then at the end of the month, they get a report about who wrote they can input that into their HRIS system, they can deduct up to $300 per month pre tax, we qualify as an IRS pre tax benefit. So just like HSA or FSA, the employees can pay up to $300 a month pre tax out of their paycheck. So we have some employers that it's a fully funded benefits totally free to the employees, we have others that charge a couple of bucks a ride about the same as what a bus pass would cost. But our average rider is going to keep $4,950 More of what they earn this year because of share. pretty life changing for a family. That's pretty high.

Kyle Roed: 21:55

So I'm curious. So is this is this similar to like an Uber or a Lyft? Where it's like it's third party drivers, and they contract with share mobility, and they just kind of hop on the route? Or how does that work?

Ryan McManus: 22:07

No. So it's never a guy in their own van. Every one of our drivers is a W two employee driving a fleet vehicle, our vehicles are 14 to 55 passenger, so they're much larger vehicles. The drivers are W two employees of one of our transportation operation partners. And so we have partners in all 50 states. These are companies that have insurance, the drivers and the vehicles to meet our standards, and they use our software delivered to deliver the service. And the reason our customers love this is I can start anywhere in the United States in two weeks, in support their transportation and create the same service everywhere.

Molly Burdess: 22:53

So I was thinking trying to be very different than Uber. Yeah, cuz the Uber limp and when they their goal, I don't know if they still are, but they work on your driver shortage.

Ryan McManus: 23:04

You know, it's no different. We support companies that are having employee shortages, why are we not having that same thing? Well, our, our drivers love our routes, because they're long. They're consistent, they're recurring. They get to build relationships with the riders, and they know what they're going to earn. The downside of being an on demand driver is you can make a lot today and not a lot tomorrow. And you don't have that consistent income. And so our jobs really for a professional driver, somebody that wants job driving as an employment, it's not a gig. I love that. I

Molly Burdess: 23:40

love what you're doing.

Ryan McManus: 23:42

Thanks. Thanks.

Kyle Roed: 23:44

I've got to believe there's also a little bit probably an attendance spike for these employers right there for a couple of reasons. But I've got to believe that, you know, there's a little bit of peer pressure, right? Don't think get get out the door get to the route, or somebody's going to be asking where you were and why you know why you aren't at work, or you're at work. And you know, that's, I mean, I could see, I could have that conversation with my ops manager, they'd be all over it, I guarantee

Ryan McManus: 24:10

it. It eliminates the excuse of I don't have transportation today, because that person can go call share, we can we can get you to work. It absolutely has a benefit on employee attendance, and then there's a retention benefit where there's just less turnover. Absolutely.

Kyle Roed: 24:32

Absolutely. So yeah, it's funny, it reminds me of the time that somebody called in because their car was frozen to the driveway. You know, I wouldn't it would have been great to be like, hey, great, I'll send a driver for ya, coincidently was also 34 degrees outside. So, you know, it might not have been completely factual but you know, I don't know. You never know.

Ryan McManus: 24:59

Well Got it, it helps the company really understand of transportation problems are real or not. And we have the solution when they're real.

Kyle Roed: 25:11

Absolutely. Yeah, I also, you know, I think it's really fascinating, you know, this to solve the problem of like, the geographic location of where you're recruiting and the opportunity to be really, really strategic there. Right. You know, and I think about, one of the most successful recruiting initiatives I ever did was I literally just Google Maps, an area that I didn't have any employees in. And then I went around to like churches and synagogues and community centers, and just handed out flyers and said, Hey, we're hiring. And we had, we had a massive hiring event. And it worked. You know, but it was because we were, we were tapping an area that we hadn't tapped before. Because our recruiting tactics were not targeted towards those individuals, you know, classified ads, or indeed ads or, you know, Google ads or whatever, you know, these people don't necessarily always have a smartphone, or they don't, or they aren't, you know, always out looking for jobs or just aren't even aware of what your organization does are who you are. And so I have to believe that, that organizations that take that approach, probably just just are more successful because they're tapping talents, pools that they haven't had before.

Ryan McManus: 26:26

Right. Right. I, I would imagine there's some correlation behind companies that are using shared mobility and other positive innovative things they're doing if they're trying us, they're probably trying other innovative things. Right. Right.

Kyle Roed: 26:40

Yeah, absolutely. We could probably, we could probably dig into into that quite a bit. Because it's a lot of it's a mindset thing, right? It's like the, the organization that's willing to do this is probably willing to do other things, right? Probably a good place to work. Period, right, or a good culture back, or at least as an open minded management team, which is a whole lot more fun than the alternative,

Ryan McManus: 27:03

right? What we're trying to do is show nonprofits, that company with shared mobility is like a stamp of approval, that if if a company is offering employee transportation with shared mobility, then refugee resettlement organization can trust that these jobs are going to be good for the people they serve. And that level of trust with the nonprofits that can support your workforce are really, really important. I think some of those groups have been taken advantage of in the past by employers, but really good employers can find really good people through those partnerships.

Kyle Roed: 27:40

I've got so many testimonials, I can't even I can't remember them all. Because I agree wholeheartedly. I've worked with a number of different local organizations, you know, it's a lot of that work is really, it's as simple as just trying to eliminate barriers to success for folks, right. And if it's in if they're if there's, I've just, I mean, it's still a staggering statistic to think about, but if they're spending 30% plus of their take home pay on transportation, there's there's other systemic issues that they're facing right now, if you can help eliminate that, that just gives them that much more opportunity to be successful in their life. Right? Yeah, absolutely. Powerful, powerful stuff. Well, this, this is just a fascinating program. I encourage anybody who's struggling to, to address this issue, do a little bit of research. The company, again, is share mobility. It's share mobility.com. And we'll have that information in the show notes. But I think it's just a fascinating approach. And I think, an area of innovation that that we should all be thinking about in our world. With that being said, I want to shift gears, I'm fascinated to get your perspective here on the rebel HR flash round. Are you ready? Let's go. All right. Question number one, we've talked about this a little bit already. Where does HR need to rebell?

Ryan McManus: 29:01

I already said this one. But I think it's eliminating the the question of do you have reliable transportation, and I think it's that status quo is making this transportation barrier worse. And that's an area where I think HR professionals can make quick impact.

Kyle Roed: 29:17

Absolutely. And it doesn't take that much work. Just just just just exit out on the application. It's not that hard, guys, just just Alright, question number two, who should we be listening to?

Ryan McManus: 29:31

No, I think there's a there's a guy named Peter ze Han. He's got a new book, called the end, the end of the world is just the beginning. And it, it could be perceived as kind of a negative look at the future. But it actually highlights the labor shortage that exists and is growing as the baby boomers are leaving and as America is creating more jobs and we're reshaping More and more manufacturing and production in this country, that we're gonna go from 11 million open jobs to 18, maybe even 20 million open jobs. But Americans that are really great position to lead, as long as we can figure out how to fill the jobs that are going to be creative. That's a really interesting book. I'd encourage anybody to read.

Kyle Roed: 30:23

He just described my life. And probably most of our listeners were like, Yeah, we know,

Ryan McManus: 30:32

shall I? One thing I didn't know was I really didn't appreciate how many baby boomers were filling frontline worker jobs. And when there was that big retirement in COVID, that's where a lot of the open jobs were. Were in in manufacturing, where there just isn't that replacement workforce, especially in a rural area.

Kyle Roed: 30:56

Again, yes, Cisco my life.

Molly Burdess: 30:57

Yeah, but I love the concept of the book, putting a positive spin on it. Like there's light at the end of the tunnel, right? Instead of default. doom and gloom.

Kyle Roed: 31:06

Yeah, it's definitely positive for America. Right? It's, it's it's progress in many ways, right? But it's, but we've got to adapt. Right? And help everybody be successful. All right, love that last question. How can our listeners connect with you.

Ryan McManus: 31:27

So I think Twitter or LinkedIn are the easiest ways to get a get a hold of me on Twitter. It's my name with no vowels, Ry, N and CMNs. And then LinkedIn, if you Google my name, you can find me. But I love connecting on those platforms, with HR professionals or executives that are curious about what we're doing. I also look good to talk to economic development, because there's such a great connection between transportation and economic development and job creation. And we can get everybody in the room together, that we can really solve these problems.

Kyle Roed: 32:00

Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. You know, I would encourage everybody to check out, check out the website as well for shear mobility will have that information in the show notes, open up your podcast player, click in check it out. And just just do some research, you know, and I guarantee you that if you start to look around and start to dig through some of your actual real reasons for turnover, or real challenges as it relates to your your, your pipeline of talent, there's probably some, some transportation issues here that are that are causing you headaches right now. So certainly worth the research and time. With that being said, Ryan, it's just been absolutely wonderful connecting with you, thank you for doing this work and for helping people address this barrier in their life.

Ryan McManus: 32:42

Thanks, Colin, Malia, you know this, this podcast is really important. I love what you guys are doing to try to shake HR up and get it to do things differently. That's what I'm all about.

Kyle Roed: 32:50

There you go. Sounds good. All right. Thanks. Take care. Right. Thanks, Brian. All right. That does it for the rebel HR podcast. Big thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at rebel HR podcast, Twitter, at rebel HR guy, or see our website at rebel human resources.com. The views and opinions expressed by rebel HR podcast are those the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast. Maybe