Business travel and environment safeguarding policy

We all have a duty to protect our environment by reducing our carbon footprint and our business travel and environment safeguarding policy is aimed at doing just that. 

Objectives and implementation

The overall objective of our Business Travel and Environment Safeguarding Policy is to reduce the environmental impact of staff travel, both in relation to work journeys and in their getting to and from work. Of course, you can’t dictate to employees what mode of transport they must use to get to and from work but you can actively encourage them to use alternatives to single person car journeys. You can, however, decide how staff should travel on work journeys, i.e. those that they are required to make in the course of undertaking their job duties, so you will have more scope here for reducing the pollution caused by the use of vehicles. Our policy sets out a series of aims to achieve its objectives, including reducing the annual business mileage in cars on work journeys, reducing the annual number of miles travelled by employees in cars in getting to and from work, actively encouraging alternative modes of transport, promoting walking and cycling to work, discouraging single person car journeys, implementing car sharing schemes, etc. It’s really up to you how you want to try to achieve these aims in practice and what schemes you want to introduce and it’s also up to you how you want to monitor how you’re getting on.

Final say

As well as protecting the environment, you will also be conscious about protecting your costs when it comes to work journeys. Therefore, our policy provides that the final decision on business travel rests with you and you will always select the most environmentally friendly and cost effective mode of travel for staff.  However, be prepared to be flexible where necessary - there might be compelling reasons why it’s better for the employee to travel by car, such as they have a disability or they are carrying equipment that would be too cumbersome on public transport or the location they’re attending is very remote.