Commuting and travel
Step three - Expert
After reviewing the different types of travel arrangements involved in your business, collecting the data and discussing more sustainable options, it’s time to formalise your plan into something that you can all work towards.
Forming a Plan
You may decide to create a Travel Policy as a formal way of documenting your plans. Equally, you may decide to create a visual roadmap, supported by your wider team, to help guide more sustainable travel options. You may wish to include:
- A commitment e.g. reducing business travel emissions by 25% over the next 2 years.
- Guidance for business travel, e.g. a flight ban on domestic flight use, or prioritising virtual meetings to reduce business travel as much as possible.
- Highlight support for commuting staff, e.g. incentivising active travel or public transport options.
- Visitor travel guidance, e.g. providing clear information on public transport routes to get to your venue.
Put Sustainable Travel on the Agenda
Making time and space to discuss sustainable travel is a great way to engage your wider team.
You could appoint a Green Team to support accountability throughout your organisation, as well as putting sustainable travel onto the agenda at your internal meetings.
If all of that sounds too serious, you could set up a sustainable travel challenge to add some competition to boost engagement with your plan!
Time to Review
Taking the time to embrace sustainable travel within your organisation is a worthwhile process. As well as reducing your carbon footprint, you could discover other benefits to your business, such as:
- Improved wellbeing amongst your team – supporting people to make better travel choices and removing barriers to active travel
- Reduced business travel costs – shifting to more cost effective modes of transport and reducing unnecessary in-person meetings
- Increased productivity – granting flexibility over working hours to remove stressful commutes can help get the best out of your team.
This is just the beginning for your sustainable travel journey, and adopting a continuous improvement approach will ensure that you can continue to drive positive change in this part of your business.
- Make time to review this work at a frequency that suits your business; e.g. annually
- Take regular feedback from your team on how the plan or policy is to follow, and make amends if required
- Share your success stories with your team, your customers and your visitors – highlighting and sharing best practice is key to inspiring others!
Sector spotlight
MAST Architects, a B Corp certified architectural practice, have successfully increased sustainable travel behaviours across the business.
By establishing an accurate reporting system for office vehicle use, replacing diesel cars with hybrid electric vehicles, limiting personal vehicle use and increasing virtual meetings, MAST have made it easier and more convenient for employees to choose less carbon intensive transport options.