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EXECUTE your initiative
Select sustainable travel interventions to achieve your objectives
Organisations can engage in a wide range of interventions to help their employees to work and travel better, including:
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Technology and policies to support flexible working and greater use of ICT to reduce travel
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Measures to promote car sharing including designated on-site parking spaces for car sharers and online support including use of partner software (e.g. liftshare.com)
Measures to encourage cycling, including provision of cycle shelters and shower/changing room facilities (e.g. Cycle to Work Guarantee scheme)
 The Cycle to Work Guarantee Scheme
The Cycle to Work Guarantee is a voluntary initiative from the Department for Transport, challenging businesses to become cycle friendly employers by making it easy for staff to cycle to and from work.
www.cycletoworkguarantee.org.uk |
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Measures to encourage walking including pedometers, changing room facilities
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Measures to promote public transport use including subsidised bus, rail and Tube travel and Park & Ride schemes
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Financial incentives (e.g. salary sacrifice, interest free bike or season ticket loans) in support of sustainable travel alternatives
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Securing partners and/or suppliers to provide health and travel related services and interventions
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Flexible working / home working scheme
 BT benefits from flexible working
For BT, the availability of flexible working arrangements resulted in improved retention, with the percentage (over the preceding 5 years) of its UK female employees returning to work after taking maternity leave reaching 96 – 99 per cent, saving about £5 million a year in recruitment and induction costs.. Furthermore, through utilising flexible work BT has saved over £500 million in accommodation costs. Home-working has also saved the company £6000 per annum for every home worker employed.
View the case study here
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Measures to reduce car use for business journeys
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Programme/ Travel Plan branding
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Creating a communications portal with information about all work improvement / travel reduction interventions
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Use of information technology – including web, audio and video conferencing – to enable remote and collaborative working.
Videoconferencing: lighter than air travel
At a global level, Steering Group member Microsoft has estimated that their employees avoided flying more than 100,000,000 miles in a fiscal year, saving 17,000 metric tons of CO2. In the UK, Microsoft saved 21% on air travel emissions over a three-year period, largely through telework and the use of technology.
The company’s collaborative technology has been used by its customers to achieve cost savings and operational efficiencies - see the case study on their website.
Paul Dickinson of the Carbon Disclosure Project has estimated that the greenhouse gas impact of one hour of flying equates to about 3-1/2 years of solid 24/7 videoconferencing, making videoconferencing around 25,000 times less harmful to the environment than air travel. |
Steering Group members – all of which are large companies – found that the four most popular commuting related measures implemented in their organisations were car sharing (1st), measures to encourage cycling and measures to encourage walking (joint 2nd) and measures to promote use of public transport (4th).
A comparison with the top performers in the Sunday Times Best Green Companies list reveals that among those 46 companies engaged in sustainable travel practices – a group which contains a significant number of SMEs - the same four measures were popular, although in a slightly different order: measures to promote cycling (1st), measures to promote use of public transport (2nd), measures to encourage walking (3rd) and car sharing (4th).
Integrate with other corporate activities and programmes
For most Steering Group companies, sustainable travel interventions were at least partially connected with a wider stream of corporate activities such as environmental management, human resources, occupational health or health and wellbeing promotion. However, some expressed a desire to develop their activities further or integrate them more fully with other work streams (e.g. health and wellbeing promotion).
Partner with others to create greater impact
Steering Group companies frequently worked with other organisations to develop and implement their sustainable travel plans. These included commercial travel consultancies, specialist service providers, local authorities, voluntary organisations as well as other companies based in the same geographical area.
Thames Valley Park Business Park Travel Plan
The Thames Valley Park Travel Plan Steering Group (TVPSG), in partnership with the Highways Agency, developed a comprehensive site-wide Travel Plan for Thames Valley Park Business Park. The aim was for TVP to lead by example in promoting sustainable travel patterns across Wokingham and the Thames Valley. TVP currently accommodates around 20 businesses, with circa 9,000 employees on site. The larger companies at TVP include Oracle, Microsoft, BG Group, ING Direct, Steria and Atlas House. WSP Group prepared the business case that was used to engage financial support from the larger employers need to deliver the Travel Plan from September 2010.
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Promote travel initiatives through events and other communication channels
A number of Steering Group members have promoted their travel impact reduction / sustainable travel initiatives to employees by incorporating a range of corporate, local, national and international events into their corporate calendars – e.g. Walk to Work Week, Bike (to Work) Week, National Liftshare Week, European Mobility Week, Earth Day, World Environment Day, Global Corporate Challenge - as well as developing their own customised events.
Active and Sustainable travel initiatives can be promoted on an ongoing basis through on-site promotions; in-house magazines; website, intranet and email updates; team briefings, senior management and other internal meetings.
Tailor travel initiatives to suit your people
Travel initiatives can be tailored in a variety of ways to accommodate different demographic groups, occupational roles and shift patterns and geographical locations. Examples from Steering Group members included providing a late opening car park for late starting shift workers and provided dedicated parking areas for working parents and other employees in special circumstances (i.e. carers).