ParkRound
A staff parking rota can be simple when everyone follows the expected schedule. But annual leave, working from home and changing attendance can quickly create a new problem: what should happen when an allocated parking space is no longer being used?
Suppose an employee has a parking space for the week but is away on Wednesday and Thursday. Those two parking days are now available, and someone else could use them.
The easiest solution is often to put everyone who wants the space into a random draw. That is simple to run, but over time it can produce results that do not feel particularly fair.
There is a better way to allocate spare employee parking spaces without making the system much more complicated.
Why a "you already have parking" rule isn't actually fair
Most rotas use some version of a simple rule for who's eligible to pick up a spare space: if you already have your own space this week, you're not in the draw - you don't need it, so it goes to someone who does.
That sounds reasonable, but the rule only checks whether you currently hold a space. It says nothing about how much of it you actually used.
Consider two employees on the same rotation. Alex drives in every single day. Beth car-shares or takes the train two or three days a week. The days Beth does not need to park, her allocated parking gets re-allocated to people that don't have parking that day. It is easy to think that this will even out over time. However, if these two people are allocated on the same week for a long stretch, Alex always misses out on the regular draws. Next week when he can be re-included in the draw, there might not be nearly as many relinquished spaces to go around.
Repeat that pattern over months and it is easy for some people to be better or worse off - not because the random draw was rigged, but because "already has parking" is a gate to enter the draw that looks random, but in many rotations it is not random at all.
Tip
If you really want to keep the excitement of random rolls, you can reshuffle the weekly rotation order every cycle so the same two people don't keep landing on the same week together. It won't fix the underlying "already has parking" problem, but it limits how badly any one pairing can compound.
A single week can't reveal that. Only the numbers over months do - and most workplaces that work with spreadsheets never keep those numbers, so the imbalance goes unnoticed by the winners and becomes a silent suspicion for the losers that don't have any data to prove their misforune. If you actually tracked who received what, you would likely find spaces haven't being shared as evenly as you think.
Random draws also raise questions about transparency. Was everybody really included? Was someone accidentally, or "accidentally" entered twice? Was the draw rerun until the wanted "random" person was picked?
Nothing improper needs to have happened for employees to start questioning why the same person appears to keep receiving spare parking. With 5 names in the draw, and 2 spots to draw every day, the chances that any one name will be picked for all 5 days is a staggering - and rather counterintuitive - 5%! (Don't believe me? See the proof.)
For workplace parking, it is better to use a system where each allocation is explained by something you can actually point to - how much parking someone has actually received, not just whether it happens to be their turn.
A fairer way to allocate spare parking spaces
Instead of using a random draw for every released parking space, keep a simple record of how many extra parking days each employee has received.
For example:
| Employee | Extra parking days received |
|---|---|
| Alex | 4 |
| Beth | 2 |
| Chris | 3 |
| Dee | 2 |
| Ellis | 5 |
If a parking space becomes available on Tuesday and several employees want it, priority goes to the eligible employees who have received the fewest extra parking days.
In this example, Beth and Dee would have priority because they have each received two extra days.
If two or more employees have the same score, a random draw can be used as the final tiebreaker. Here the random draw creates no issues as the situation will even out literally on the next draw.
At face value having another list to maintain might sound more complicated, but try it out and you will find it is easier to work up the list until someone needs parking than it is to find out everyone that needs parking and type their names into a random roller. Not only is it easier, but it takes luck out of the equation.
Why tracking previous parking allocations improves fairness
The main advantage of this system is that each extra parking allocation affects future priority.
If someone receives several spare parking days, their score increases and they naturally move behind colleagues who have received fewer.
Someone who has repeatedly missed out stays near the front of the queue for future spaces.
It also makes the allocation easier to explain.
Instead of saying:
"Alex won the draw again."
You can say:
"Beth and Dee had received the fewest additional parking days, so they had priority."
That gives employees a visible reason for the decision and makes the parking allocation policy easier to administer consistently.
Should employees be allowed to swap parking spaces?
Another way to deal with unused staff parking is to allow employees to swap allocated days or weeks between themselves. At first, that can seem easier. If one employee cannot use their parking space, they simply exchange it with someone else. This takes the burden out of the parking admin, each person is responsible for managing the swap themselves.
The difficulty is that access to swaps is not necessarily equal.
Employees with flexible schedules, or who simply know more people and have better relationships, may find it easy to rearrange parking weeks. Others may have fixed working days, childcare arrangements, travel commitments or other restrictions that make swapping much harder.
Over time, people who are able to organise swaps may preserve more of their allocated parking, while employees with less flexibility lose more of theirs. And people who fail to successfully swap don't just miss their day; either the parking spot stays unutilised, or you still have to have a way to re-allocate the space.
Ultimately swapping creates another layer of rules. Can employees swap individual days or only full weeks? Do swaps need approval? Can two employees repeatedly swap with each other? Should the swap be noted down or it is simply between the swappers?
What starts as an informal solution can become another system that someone has to manage.
A simpler workplace parking policy: return unused spaces to the pool
One alternative is to have a simple no-swaps rule.
If an employee cannot use an allocated parking day, the space goes back into the shared parking pool. It is then reallocated using one set of rules.
That gives everyone access to spare parking through the same system rather than relying on private arrangements between colleagues.
It is more restrictive than allowing swaps, but it can make the parking policy easier to understand and apply consistently. It also creates less friction - one can easily feel very excluded if they can't find anyone to swap, and one can be pressured into a swap they don't want, simply because they find it difficult to say no to certain people.
Can you manage fair parking allocation in a spreadsheet?
For a small workplace, yes.
A spreadsheet can be enough to manage a fair staff parking system. You can record the normal parking rota, the number of additional days each person has received (and for separate reasons, you will also need to record when each rotation cycle ends).
The allocation rule for relinquished days can then remain relatively simple:
Give the relinquished parking space to the eligible employee with the fewest extra parking days.
For a small team, that may be all you need.
The difficult part is not the rule itself. It is the administration.
Whenever a parking space becomes available, someone has to check who wants it, compare previous allocations, choose the correct employee and update the records. Who has access to the spreadsheet? Who is trusted by everyone? What happens when they are off?
The spreadsheet can manage the information, but someone still has to keep it accurate.
When employee parking software becomes useful
As flexible working increases, staff parking becomes less predictable. Employees may work from home on different days, take leave, change their schedules or release parking spaces at short notice.
That means spare parking can become available frequently, and manually reallocating those spaces can become an ongoing administrative task. The morning frenzy does not help, as people scramble to find out who is not parking, who needs parking and who gets the spot often while people are already en-route to the office.
That's often why teams end up back on a spreadsheet - the software options either look too complex, cost too much, or bury pricing behind a sales call.
ParkRound is designed to automate that process. Designed with small teams in mind, it offers a set-and-forget interface and a simple subscription plan.
Employees can request parking for the days they need it, while relinquished spaces are allocated automatically to those that joined the waiting list. Parking becomes fair, transparent, and management free. ParkRound's extra features are only the cherry on the top!
For a small team, a spreadsheet may still be perfectly adequate.
But when keeping workplace parking fair starts requiring constant administration, or worse, it causes bad blood, parking allocation software can make the process much easier.