Welcome to the second post in our series exploring how Jawnt’s strong client relationships inform our platform and help improve transit benefits. Feedback from current customers helps Jawnt continue building a top-tier commuter benefits platform. (Have feedback for us? Reach out to your account manager!)

It’s well established that the best way to get your members riding transit is to cover the cost. But what if, due to whatever policies or regulations, you need to have different levels of subsidies for different groups? Jawnt has you covered.

Subsidies

First off, what do we mean by subsidies? 

Through Jawnt, organizations make it easy for their members to enroll in commuter benefits. Some organizations go a step further and shoulder some of the cost of those benefits themselves, and we’re strong supporters of employers paying for their employees’ commutes. Every organization has their own policies, and our platform supports subsidy policies that cover any scenario, including:

• The full cost of a pass. In other words, the pass is free for the member.
• A percentage of a pass. Typically, we see these with some cap, such as 50% off the first $105, then the member pays the rest.
• A fixed amount off a pass. For example, the organization picks up the first $100 and the member pays the rest.

Our research with SEPTA shows that employees ride transit more when their passes are partially subsidized, and ride even more when their passes are fully subsidized. If you want your members to leave their cars at home, consider subsidizing some or all of their transit commute.

Custom Subsidies

A one-size fits all solution sounds nice, but what if different groups within an organization need different subsidy policies? One employer we’ve spoken with has over 40 different levels of commute benefit subsidy for its five thousand employees! This is an extreme case, but it’s reasonable that an organization would want to spend more money supporting transit trips for commutes to a downtown office and more for parking out in a transit desert, or prefers monthly passes over single ride tickets. There are also cases where members are ineligible by either federal law or internal policy for subsidized transit benefits, such as part-time employees or students. 

In any case, Jawnt has you covered. We can support an unlimited number of benefit subsidies. 

We’re nerds for bespoke HR policies, and would love to hear about your organization’s ideal commute benefit subsidies. If you’ve got a challenging or complex set of rules that you’d like help administering, reach out to us!

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