Business Travel

How To Create a Sustainable Business Travel Policy

October 5, 2022 by Benjamin Hernandez

A windswept plain reveals clouded mountains in the distance. Wind turbines stretch over the landscape. Text-over-image reads "Rocketrip: Sustainable Business Travel."

COVID-19 has modified or accelerated the way many companies do business. The most obvious area relates to working from home, but corporate travel has changed quite a bit, too. More companies want meaningful, long-term, sustainable business travel. If you are thinking about creating such a policy for your business, here are some ideas and tips.

Sustainable Business Travel: Your Company’s Goals

Before diving into policy creation, clarify what the overarching point(s) of the policy will be. For example, is the policy mainly for cost savings or to promote both savings and employee health and satisfaction? Do environmental factors play a role? How much money would you want to save?

Answer questions such as these: What did business travel for the company look like five years ago? How about last year and now? Why did travel occur, and what were the outcomes? (For example, maybe one type of travel was to allow remote employees across the country to meet once a year to foster closer collaboration overall.) Who tended to travel where, stay where, and for how much and how long? Who handled bookings, expenses, reimbursements, and other financial matters? What did/does the business’s carbon footprint look like?

By having a clear idea of the current and past state of travel at your business, you can identify areas of strength and weakness. You can set a more defined path going forward and clarify goals such as, say, 20% business travel savings in the next year and 15% lower carbon emissions.

Seven Areas the Policy Should Cover

An effective policy for sustainable business travel touches on these seven areas.

1. Trip Length

Eliminate overnight one-day and two-day trips for the most part (whether they are via car, train, plane, or something else). Replace them with several trips combined into one or with virtual collaboration tools.

The policy could be that these shorter trips are, by default, not allowed unless they are essential (essential business travel is for employees whose duties are important for business continuity or infrastructure). Supervisor permission would be required if an employee wanted or needed to go on a short, nonessential trip.

2. Virtual Collaboration Tools

Most employees are already well-versed in virtual collaboration tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Docs. Overall, virtual collaboration resources fall into areas such as video conferencing, cloud storage, document synchronization, whiteboards, instant messaging, file sharing, and calendar sharing.

You may already have all of the tools you need to replace shorter trips and some longer trips, but do not assume you do. Ask the employees who travel what they like about the trips, what they get out of them, and which tools come closest to replicating these experiences and outcomes.

The final (for now) draft of your sustainable business travel policy should detail the virtual alternatives to travel, what they do, and how employees can get trained to use them if necessary. Explain how to host virtual meetings and how to keep them engaging and productive. For example, smaller groups (or breakout groups) encourage more participation, and hosts should learn everyone’s names in advance if possible.

3. Expenses and Reimbursement

Employees may still incur expenses even if they do not leave the office to travel. For example, maybe a group of employees needs a special software program for video conferencing. Encourage this type of usage and experimentation by detailing reimbursable expenses.

4. Include a Decision Tree

It is not always clear to employees whether they should stay in the office or travel. A sustainable business travel decision tree that explains rationales, consequences, and alternatives is helpful.

For instance, you could suggest alternative meeting sites, more sustainable modes of travel or virtual collaboration tools instead of defaulting to what your company used to do that is more expensive and not environmentally friendly.

5. Focus On Lowering Carbon Emissions

A major way to lower carbon emissions is to prioritize train travel before plane travel when it makes sense. Trains are incredibly energy-efficient per passenger mile compared to cars and planes.

When travelers need to fly, they should try to fly direct instead of connecting. Newer planes are more environmentally friendly and burn less fuel. Boeing 787, Airbus 321 NEO, and the Airbus 350 are good planes for lowering carbon emissions.

When employees stay in another city, encourage the use of walking, biking, public transportation, and electrical vehicles. As for lodgings, seek out “green” hotels.

6. Employee Health and Morale

Sustainable business travel policies should also explain how employees benefit. The focus should not all be on the company and how it is trimming its bottom line and saving money. Highlight how less travel improves the work-life balance for employees and prevents the spread of illness.

7. Travel

Travel is inevitable for some employees and job functions. Your policy should cover what to do when it does become necessary. For example, are there agencies, airlines, hotel chains, and the like you want employees to use? Or should they have someone else (explain who) coordinate their travel? Spell out these details clearly.

One option is the Rocketrip platform. We cut travel costs by 20% on average while boosting employee engagement and satisfaction. Three widgets, savings, sustainability, and safety, help companies when they book travel. The savings widget helps your business save money given the employee’s destination and activities there.

The sustainability widget explains which flights offer the best carbon offset. You can even view your employees’ travel history, review their carbon footprint, and see how it could be reduced. The safety widget focuses on all things COVID as well as other safety issues: any restrictions at the destination, COVID-19 testing and visa mandates, any breaking news there, and so on.

Approach the policy as a living document that is easy to adapt as financial, environmental, and global health conditions shift. Make it accessible to all employees, and listen to their feedback (good and bad) about their travels or lack thereof.