Incorporating sustainability into business travel is no more a mere contemplation. It is a vital need to mitigate your organization’s carbon footprint. Sustainable business travel helps shape a more sustainable enterprise besides supporting employees to execute their tasks responsibly and safely. Sustainable business travel attracted the spotlight as organizations resumed business trips after COVID-19 to benefit from the greater productivity of face-to-face meetings. Adopting a sustainable business travel policy can improve your company’s competitive edge with a better reputation. Leveraging efficient policies for business travel saves time and money while augmenting productivity and employee satisfaction.
How to achieve sustainable business travel?
Companies can aim to meet the sustainability goals of business travel with a greater focus on reducing carbon footprint by astute planning and training.
1. Evaluating the carbon emissions
Identifying the extent of the organization’s current carbon emissions is the most crucial activity toward sustainable corporate travel. Third-party travel agencies can determine carbon emissions by tracking business trips, but a SaaS-based travel management platform can efficiently generate real-time carbon footprint data.
2. Employee training
Employees are the main stakeholders in your organization’s efforts to achieve business travel sustainability. Provide training on how to adopt sustainable transportation and accommodation. Choosing train services or staying at certified hotels meeting green standards are a few ways to reduce business travel carbon footprint. Using eco-friendly items and avoiding single-use products is a practical way to reduce carbon footprint.
3. Smart business travel planning
Reducing the number of business trips can effectively reduce carbon footprints. Clubbing multiple destinations in a single business trip helps avoid repeat trips. Covering different stations in a proper sequence without backtracking minimizes travel distance and carbon footprint. Reducing the number of employees traveling together for the same event is also a helpful strategy for planning sustainable business trips. Book more non-stop flights to mitigate fuel consumption, as stopovers can impact fuel efficiency.
Must Read: Why Is Corporate Travel Planning Important For Businesses
4. Set priorities
In-person meetings are vital for business growth. However, you can achieve comparable results by adopting video conferencing. Identify the priority of attending business meetings in person by evaluating the purpose of each business meeting. Set measurable goals to replace business trips with virtual meetings to enable sustainability. Determine the possibility of postponing a business trip to combine it with another upcoming trip.
5. Encourage employee participation
Inspire employees to share ideas and suggestions to enhance business travel sustainability by announcing rewards. Recognize employees passionate about reducing their carbon footprint by adhering to sustainable travel policy guidelines. These rewards and recognitions will encourage the adoption of a sustainable business travel policy. It will help establish a sustainable business travel culture within the organization.
6. Use of online travel management tools
Online travel management platforms like Paxes boost compliance with sustainable travel policies, as you can embed it into the travel booking process. Employees can choose from the travel options that are n line with the travel policy. Automatic approval of itineraries that comply with sustainability norms saves employee time. Employees can choose sustainable travel options while booking flights and accommodations through the travel management app.
How to strive for sustainable business travel policy
Travel managers should identify the leading contributors to the carbon footprint of business travel in the organization by assessing the present level of carbon emissions. Strategic planning to reduce the impact of business travel on sustainability is essential. They can define measurable objectives to achieve the goals within a specific period.
1. Establishing straightforward strategies
Clarity and simplicity of strategies facilitate the implementation of the sustainable travel policy across all employee levels. The following practical policy guidelines improve adoption:
- Mandating the use of rail travel instead of air travel
- Choosing direct flights
- Prefer airlines having new aircraft on long-haul flights
- Create an inventory of priority airlines adopting sustainability
- Prioritize the use of public transportation for local journeys
- Effectively communicate sustainable travel policy
Employee participation in implementing sustainability guidelines is critical for successful policy compliance. Training employees and conveying a sustainable travel policy is crucial.
2. Track and monitor
Monitoring the adoption of a sustainable travel policy by tracking each business trip is essential to ensure seamless compliance. Modifications are necessary if there is no perceptible change in carbon emissions. One can leverage online travel management platforms like Paxes to pinpoint real-time policy deviations. The platform enables policy modifications whenever necessary.
3. Adopt counteractive measures
The path to a hundred percent business travel sustainability is steep and long. A carbon offsetting strategy is crucial to reduce the damaging impact of carbon emissions on the environment. Build partnerships with organizations that strive to protect the environment. Strong counteractive measures can effectively tackle climate change.
Benefits of sustainable business travel
Companies can explore many benefits of adopting business travel sustainability.
1. Cost savings
Companies save business travel costs by implementing business travel sustainability. These revenue benefits are because of cutting down on business trips and adopting policies like the use of public transport and train journeys. Reducing in-person meetings by leveraging virtual meetings can significantly save travel costs.
2. Accomplish Corporate Social Responsibility
CSR reflects the organization’s social accountability. Sustainable business travel helps companies fulfill Corporate Social Responsibility toward reducing carbon emissions.
3. Bolsters brand image
Customers prefer associating with socially and environmentally responsible companies. Adopting a sustainable business travel policy boosts your brand reputation, besides improving competitiveness.
Conclusion
Corporate travel is an essential element of business growth. An increase in business travel contributes to the carbon footprint. A sustainable business travel policy mitigates your organization’s carbon emissions and boosts the affection of employees and customers.
Efficient travel management platforms like Paxes improve compliance with sustainable business travel policies. The platform simplifies the evaluation of carbon footprint by enabling advanced analytics. The platform seamlessly integrates with your sustainability policy guidelines to enhance compliance.
Sustainable Business Travel FAQs
What are the most environment-friendly modes of transport?
Walking and cycling are the most eco-friendly ways to travel.
What are the three considerations for sustainable business travel?
Financial, environmental, and social sustainability are three considerations for sustainable business travel.
What is the hidden cost of business travel?
Loss of time in administrative work like searching for cheap travel options, negotiating, expense report preparation, approvals, and processing several travel requests are a few hidden costs of business travel.
What is the obvious environmental impact of business travel?
Carbon emission is the leading environmental impact of business travel increasing carbon footprint.
