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In the course of sustainability endeavours, employee mobility is becoming an increasingly important issue for Swiss companies. The Zurich-based company Urban Connect helps companies to organise this as simply as possible, thereby saving costs, space, and emissions.
It was actually supposed to be a café. Judith Häberli and her partner Robert Ruttmann had been inspired by the trendy and cosy cafés in Germany. ‘At the time, there was hardly anything like this in Switzerland,’ recalls Häberli. A suitable location was quickly found: A bicycle shop on Josefstrasse in Zurich was about to be liquidated and was perfect for their project. The two sought dialogue with the owner. The owner was willing to hand over the business to them, but only on the condition that they took on the apprentice bicycle mechanic.
So Judith Häberli and Robert Ruttmann thought about opening a bike café and looked into the bike market and the opportunities it offered. The two started using the Urban Connect app to enable employees of participating companies to organise their mobility easily and flexibly. The idea of offering e-bike sharing for companies instead of the bike café began to mature. Which they founded in 2013. This was also triggered by climate change, which Judith Häberli sees as an overriding issue: ‘Climate change is the crisis of our time, not just that of my generation,’ she emphasises. ‘If we don’t get a grip on it, sooner or later everything else will no longer matter.’
An email that Judith Häberli wrote to Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President Engineering at Google, proved to be fateful for the two of them. He put her in touch with the right people at Google Switzerland, laying the foundation for the partnership between the two companies. They have a lot to thank Google for: ‘Without their goodwill and always solution-orientated feedback, we would never have got to where we are today,’ says Häberli emphatically. Her thoughts seem to drift briefly into the past, her voice is a little raspy.
In 2013, employee mobility was not yet an important topic for many Swiss companies, but Google was already familiar with it from the USA. And motivated Urban Connect to further develop its e-bike sharing system and make it easily accessible and usable via smartphone.
In the early days, e-bike sharing was more of a side project for Häberli, who was still in the middle of her studies at the time and was a first-time mum. With the development of the app, however, Urban Connect rapidly picked up speed. Until Covid caught up with the growing and developing company. And practically brought it to a standstill.
The two founders used the Covid period to think together with their team about where and how the topic of corporate mobility should develop. This led to them adding electric cars and e-scooters to their fleet and integrating them into the existing app. ‘That was a quantum leap for us,’ recalls Häberli.
Today, Urban Connect is the leading multimodal mobility platform in Switzerland. The Urban Connect concept is simple and clear: ‘We want to help corporate customers to organise mobility for their employees as simply and cheaply as possible,’ explains Häberli. With the shared e-cars, e-scooters and e-bikes, the companies would automatically save costs, space, and emissions.
At the same time, employees get ‘a cool user experience by being able to access a diverse range of mobility options in a single app’, the entrepreneur continues. The setting of the app can be customised to the needs of individual companies.
More than 60 companies now rely on Urban Connect’s shared mobility options. In addition to Google, these include many well-known companies such as Migros, Swiss, Axpo, Lonza and Roche. Häberli uses the example of Roche to illustrate one of the benefits for the companies: ‘Roche’s company fleet used to only be used for business purposes, but now employees can also use the cars privately for a moderate fee.’
On the one hand, this has helped to significantly improve the utilisation of the fleet; on the other hand, Roche has been able to significantly reduce the costs involved. Häberli is particularly pleased with the fact that more than 80 Roche employees have already decided not to buy a car or have even sold their private car because they can now use the Urban Connect e-bike and e-car fleet.
Last year, Urban Connect entered into partnerships with SBB and Post Company Cars. Thanks to the collaboration with SBB, employees of the affiliated companies can now also book business or private public transport tickets via the Urban Connect app.
Post Company Cars is an operational collaboration. While Urban Connect has built up its own network for the maintenance and repair of its e-bike fleet, this was previously lacking for the e-car fleet. As the largest brand- and manufacturer-independent fleet manager in Switzerland, Post Company Cars has an extensive network, even in rural areas, which Urban Connect can draw on for repairs or other work on its e-car fleet if required thanks to its partnership.
Professionally, things could hardly be better for Judith Häberli and her husband Robert Ruttmann. This is also due to the fact that they work well together as a team, both in business and in their private lives, and have an incredible strength that has helped them through difficult and tough times in the past, as Häberli emphasises.
So what about reconciling – or in her case, separating – private and professional life? Something that is not always easy, as the mother of three admits: ‘It takes a lot of open communication as a couple, as a team and as managers,’ she explains. And as a couple, you also have to protect your private life. Of course, there are also positive aspects.
‘When I’m at home, I’m just mum.’
For example, switching off is much easier because it happens all by itself at home: ‘When I’m at home, I’m just mum,’ says Häberli. The children don’t care what’s going on at work. At home, completely different things and topics are important and take centre stage. ‘Sometimes I think that our children may even have saved us from a burnout,’ admits Häberli.
For Häberli, the boundaries between work and private life no longer have to be so clearly separated. ‘In the past, I would never have taken the children to the office because I thought you had to separate private and business life.’ Nowadays, the children can also be found in the office from time to time.
All three are also very uncomplicated. ‘If, for example, one of our employees picks them up from training because something has come up at short notice, that’s completely fine with them,’ explains Judith Häberli. The children also know all the Urban Connect employees well.
‘There are moments when I reflect and think: that’s just crazy.’
Judith Häberli and Robert Ruttmann now employ around 35 people. What the entrepreneur still can’t quite believe from time to time: ‘There are moments when I reflect and think: this is just crazy,’ she admits. Most of the employees can be found in the office every day, even though there is no office obligation.
Everyone would pull together. ‘I think that’s because we have a common goal and want to change something,’ reflects Häberli. The relationship between them is informal and very collegial. ‘That makes and gives a lot of pleasure,’ she says, her eyes shining. At the same time, it is also a great responsibility.
The Urban Connect team’s vision is: ‘Change Mobility, Change the World’. How close has Urban Connect already come to achieving this? ‘This is clearly our North Star – we haven’t reached our goal yet,’ explains Häberli. But the direction is right, she continues.
This can be seen in the example of Roche: ‘When giant corporations completely switch their employee mobility to our solution and scale the shared, electric and multimodal concept internationally, we are heading in the right direction.’ Since this summer, Roche has also been using Urban Connect in Germany – in Mannheim and Penzberg.
Franziska Frey – www.verkehrsmonitor.ch
