Climate change provisions

We’ve drafted a few environmentally friendly provisions that you can include in employment contracts or your staff handbook if you wish.

Fighting climate change

What we’ve done in our Climate Change Provisions is to provide optional updates to two of our existing clauses and two of our existing policies if you want to take a more proactive approach to managing climate risks. You might decide that not all these updates are achievable or desirable in your business, so you can just incorporate whatever works for you. There are other policies/ clauses that you could amend if you wanted to go further in being environmentally conscious, but we’ve stuck with just four.

Garden leave clause

Our update to our Garden Leave Clause allows employees to use their garden leave to volunteer for an environmental organisation. This is as an exception to the general rule in our clause that employees are prohibited from taking on any paid or unpaid work or activity during the garden leave period.

Reimbursement of expenses policy

Our Reimbursement of Expenses Policy now has two optional additions. To reduce the amount of business travel, the first update encourages employees to meet clients/customers virtually by default. Where, however, business travel is approved, the wording goes on to provide that the employee must consider both the cost and the carbon footprint of their journey and chosen method of transport (as opposed to just the cost), and so they should choose the most economic and environmentally friendly means of travel, where practicable. Do consider whether any travel restrictions might discriminate against disabled workers, who may have specific travel needs, and so be prepared to make reasonable adjustments. The second update states that it’s preferable for employees to choose vegetarian or vegan meal options where they’re staying away on business; you can’t force them not to eat meat though.

Dress and appearance policy

Where employees wear their own clothes for work, our update to our Dress and Appearance Policy encourages them to consider the environmental footprint of the clothes they wear and thus discourages “fast fashion” in favour of sustainable clothing, such as garments made from recycled materials. Again, you can’t force this on your staff, but you can actively encourage it. Where employees are provided with a uniform, our update states that these are made from organic or recycled materials or are sourced from net zero suppliers.

Training requirement clause

Our update to our Training Requirement Clause encourages staff to attend any voluntary in-house environmental and sustainability training programmes, and it provides that they can also seek approval to enrol onto similar external training programmes where they have a justifiable business need for additional knowledge and the purpose is to enable them to improve the environmental performance of your business.