"Carpooling is a transport mode that can help to shorten commuting time and costs, and also contribute to taking care of the environment" (Elizabeth Pugeat, KLx General Manager)

Gas prices keep going up in Portugal (too) and we have seen an even more important increase in user visits / new members / new trips being added on our portals during the last weeks...

Our goal is to help more and more carpoolers to save money, time and CO2 emissions and, to fulfill this mission, we're always happy to spread the word with the help of stakeholders who understood how important carpooling can be for their employees, their companies and the society.

Today we're glad to interview Elizabeth Pugeat, General Manager of KLx, an IT firm that recently joined the Empresas à Boleia service / network to help its workers on their commuting trips.

Hi Elizabeth! Can you please say a few sentences to present KLx? (Activity, organization, number of employees, ...)

KLx is a Portuguese subsidiary of the Credit Agricole group, the first bank - insurance group in Europe. We provide IT skills services for our partners in the group, working seamlessly with their IT teams . Our mission is to work side by side with them in their IT activities and projects. We count over 400 people in our team working with 7 different companies in the group and we are still growing.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic beginning, working from home has been the "norm" for a lot of professionals. What is the current situation within KLx and what are the plans regarding this topic?

For over 2 years we were working almost exclusively remotely, which was a challenge. Since the 14^th of April, when the restrictions from the Portuguese government were lifted, we are progressively going back to the office. Our model is hybrid and offers great flexibility to split time between home and the office. Still, we all have to build our new steady state.

What are the reasons that brought the company to join the “Empresas à Boleia” service / network?

Public transportation access was important to choose location of our offices, as commuting can be time consuming and costly. Still some people do not have good public transport options or may still be reluctant to use public transportation after sanitary crisis, so Empresas à Boleia can be a very valuable solution for them.

According to you, how important is the carpooling development for KLx and how much potential do you see you in Lisbon and the Parque das Nações area in particular?

Carpooling is a transport mode that can help to shorten commuting time and costs, and also contribute to taking care of the environment, so I believe it will develop. Many companies are located in Parque das Nações, people are building new habits with RTO (Return To Office), and costs of car transportation is a growing concern, so I believe it may grow quickly for KLx teams.

Do you already know people that share cars on a daily basis to commute (or that would like to do it) ? (If yes, what are their feedbacks about this way of commuting?)

We know that there are a dozen of klxians that subscribed to the platform over the last weeks. Unfortunately we don’t have much feedback for now because we just started to go back to the office. But we know that some people use carpooling in their personal life for traveling or even to get to some corporate events that we organized (hikes, diners…). We just wish people experiment this option for commuting to work.

The carpooling initiative has just been launched at KLx: what are the company expectations and how can our startup help you most with Empresas à Boleia?

The key is how to promote this service within our teams. We will of course need the support of the Empresas à Boleia team to find innovative ideas to promote it and to make people try it and use it over and over again.