If you hadn’t noticed, electric vehicle (EV) momentum has jumped up a notch or two in recent months, with more new drivers on the roads than ever and news coverage in almost every mainstream media outlet. BloombergNEF predicts that global EV sales will increase from 10.6 million in 2022 to 20.5 million in 2025. That's more than a 93% increase in the span of just three years.
Where are all these new EV drivers going to plug in? Recent legislation is helping governments implement public EV charging infrastructure, which will boost our ability to find charging while out and about as well as enable us to drive longer distances in our EVs.
The majority of day-to-day charging, however, is happening where vehicles are at rest for the longest stretches of time — at home and at work.
Why offer workplace charging?
Workplace charging is especially important for people who don’t have access to charging at home. Besides being a great benefit to employees, we’ve identified several reasons why companies are choosing to install EV charging at the workplace now:
- To meet employee demand as more people drive EVs to work
- To meet sustainability goals by lowering their overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
- To boost their brand image by showing how they are contributing to a healthier planet
- To generate indirect revenue by offering public EV charging after hours for a fee
Citrix: A workplace charging leader
At Citrix, the employee experience is at the center of all the company does — whether it’s providing great collaboration tools to customers or creating an excellent work environment for its own people.
In 2013, when interest in e-mobility began to grow among Citrix employees in California, the company responded by installing 12 charging ports at its Santa Clara campus. The following year, Citrix expanded its EV charging program to include four more charging ports in Raleigh, North Carolina. Then in 2018, it was clear that more and more employees in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, wanted to drive their EVs to work, so the company installed four charging ports at that location.
In 2020, Citrix formalized its corporate sustainability goals with new targets to reduce total absolute GHG emissions by 30% and emissions per unit of revenue by 50% by 2030. So for Citrix, not only does the amenity keep employees happy, but it is also helping the company make strides toward meeting these overarching sustainability goals.
Key steps to charging success
Based on the company's experience bringing charging to multiple locations, Citrix recommends four key steps for implementing a successful workplace EV charging program.
- Engage employees and your executive leadership team upfront. Use employee surveys to gauge interest in EV charging and to understand how many people are either currently driving electric or considering an EV for their next car.
Talk to your executive leadership team as well as cross-functional business leaders to get support for your charging program. Share details on how you intend to drive your initiative, how the program aligns with your corporate sustainability goals and what the return on investment will look like.
- Educate employees about EV charging. Take time to understand who your users will be and carefully plan out your road map to implementation, including specific timelines and milestones.
Create a campaign to educate employees on the benefits of driving electric and share details about your EV charging program at each stage of development.
- Deploy your EV charging program and encourage usage. Leverage employee resource groups to spread the word and increase usage. Promote your program through various internal communication channels.
- Gather key learnings. Survey early adopters to find out what they like most about the program and ask what could be done better. Identify any technical issues and find ways to resolve them.
Run reports on energy usage and costs to share with key stakeholders. Survey your general employee population to gauge interest in EV adoption and plan to scale your program accordingly. Continue educating employees and promoting program usage.
How ChargePoint helped Citrix
Citrix needed a scalable charging solution that would be easy to manage across multiple campus locations. ChargePoint fit the bill and has delivered beyond expectations, from making it easy for employees to charge up using an intuitive app to enabling company leaders to manage everything from one central dashboard, reduce costs with power-sharing, run comprehensive usage reports and much more.
Watch our on-demand webinar, “Plugged-in strategies for workplace EV charging,” to learn more about Citrix’ workplace charging program and discover how ChargePoint can help you reach your own charging goals.
