Running a sustainable business doesn’t start and end in the office. You must always consider it, even during business trips, which means putting a sustainable travel policy in place.

Building a sustainable travel policy will help to reduce emissions and promote employee wellbeing as your team travels. To get it right, you need to review the forms of transport your team takes and make sure you partner with companies that take specific action to improve sustainability.

What is a business travel policy?

If any number of your employees travel for work then business travel policies are essential. A corporate business travel policy increases safety, ensures reliability, and keeps costs down.

Business travel policies clarify to your employees why, how, and when they can travel for work. These policies are essentially a group of business travel guidelines that let your employees know:

Which forms of transport they can use;
How much they can spend;
What they can and can’t expense.

Regarding expenses, with Bolt Business, your employees can charge ground travel straight to your company in the Bolt app, removing the need to use their own money and lose time claiming expenses.

But your business travel policies shouldn’t entirely revolve around spending. Of growing importance is making sure your business travel policies consider sustainability. And the best way to do this is by building a sustainable business travel policy.

What is a sustainable travel policy?

The main aim of many sustainable travel policies is to reduce carbon emissions from business travel. And reducing environmental impact must be a key part of your company’s travel policy.

But the sustainable travel policies you implement should consider 4 sustainability pillars: environmental, human, social, and economic.

This means your company’s travel policy needs to cover:

Environmental issues;
Employee wellbeing;
Economic impact.

Including the above will give your team a safe way to travel for work while having little to no environmental impact.

Let’s look at each of these pillars in more detail. 👇

Environmental issues

As travel makes up 16.2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, addressing business travel and turning to more sustainable options will boost your company’s green credentials.

To achieve your green travel ambitions:

Reduce carbon emissions;
Offset remaining emissions;
Work with sustainable travel partners.

Employee wellbeing

A stressful and long commute has a negative impact on the success of any business trip. And for 90% of employees, the quality of business travel impacts their job satisfaction.

You must do everything possible to achieve business goals while maintaining job satisfaction for your travellers.

Frequent employee surveys will help you understand how satisfied your team is with your business travel policies.

Economic impact

Travelling allows your business to contribute to the local economy. Encourage your team to support local accommodation venues, transport services, and businesses.

Acting in an economically sustainable way will be a great benefit to the local economy in your host city and country.

Why now is the time to have a green business travel plan

The number of companies recognising the importance of sustainability in business is growing. And for many of those companies, business travel is a significant source of carbon emissions.

Employees want to work for companies with sustainability at the heart of their business plans.

Business person walking towards a work taxi

How to build a sustainable business travel policy

When building a sustainable travel policy, the best place to start is to understand how and where you need to improve. To do that, it’s crucial to calculate the current carbon emissions from your company’s business travel.

Once you’ve done that, you can take the necessary actions:

Use digital tickets and receipts;
Find alternatives to air travel;
Offer incentives to encourage greener travel habits;
Turning to electric or hybrid company cars.

You can then offset any remaining carbon emissions.

Understand your current travel carbon emissions

58% of companies measure the carbon emissions of their business travel. This is a great place to start when building a sustainable travel policy, but it needs to go further. Few companies are taking any action once they know their carbon footprint:

17% of companies offset carbon emissions from travel;
19% encourage the use of public transport or low-emission vehicles;
22% consider their carbon impact when working with suppliers.

It’s worth noting that this final statistic is expected to rise significantly as more legislation encourages companies to monitor and report on their Scope 3 carbon emissions.

Offset carbon emissions

Knowing your company’s carbon footprint gives you a platform to build a sustainable travel policy.

It’s important to recognise the areas of your team’s business travel that emit the most carbon — most likely air travel. In countries such as France, flights are now banned when the same journey can be made by train in less than 2.5 hours.

You can then take steps to find alternative forms of transport, such as public transport or low-emission vehicles.

When alternatives aren’t possible, offsetting carbon emissions is an option. This can involve:

Making capital investments in green technology;
Investing in renewable energy or energy efficiency projects.

Rather than handling this yourself, you can partner with sustainable travel companies. All Bolt rides in Europe are carbon-neutral as we contribute to carbon offset projects around the globe. And you can get a Carbon Offset Certificate to prove that the emissions from these trips have been neutralised.

Bolt Business Carbon Offset Certificate

Use digital tickets and receipts

Planting trees is an important part of managing carbon emissions. But if you’re still using paper tickets and receipts, that contributes to trees being cut down.

Ordering travel services online has made it easier to remove physical tickets, but receipts are still a problem — especially when it comes to expense reports.

Bolt Business automatically provides a pre-filled digital receipt after every journey. This makes travel more sustainable and saves your team hours of reporting time.

Find alternatives to air travel

Air travel makes up 90% of emissions from business travel. Bringing down the number of flights your team takes will set your business on its way to achieving its sustainability goals.

But when business takes your team overseas, it can be hard to avoid air travel.

Train travel is often the best alternative; in some cases (like the Eurostar), it can take you overseas without needing to fly. You’ll also save time going through security.

If the trip’s for a meeting, make sure it actually needs to be in person. A video call could save a lot of carbon. Otherwise, avoid first-class air travel as emissions are three times higher than economy per person.

“Business trips are under much more scrutiny than in previous years regarding sustainability. If there’s not enough value in the trip, it won’t happen.”

You should also focus on ensuring the travel to and from the airport is sustainable — limiting the environmental impact.

Turn to electric or hybrid vehicles

The company car has been an integral part of business travel for years. But as fuel costs continue to rise, many companies are looking at alternatives to managing a fleet.

You could turn to a car allowance or company fuel cards, but these won’t save you from rising costs.

And they shift the problem of carbon emissions onto the employee. Only 4.6% of cars on EU roads are powered by an alternative to petrol or diesel — making it highly likely that most of your team will be driving petrol or diesel cars.

Turning to electric or hybrid company cars will help to lower carbon emissions. But replacing an entire fleet will be expensive.

Business person charging an electric company car

Sustainable travel policy template

The ideal sustainable travel policy will make it easy for your team to travel without harming the environment.

A sustainable travel policy can include:

Allowing electric scooter and e-bike rides;
Permitting travel to and from specific locations;
Limiting the maximum number of rides within a certain timeframe.

By introducing a sustainable travel policy, your company could end up with a separate policy for expenses. But these policies can work together.

With Bolt Business, you get a digital pre-filled receipt after every journey, and admins can access full travel reports. This means your travel and expense policies can work together and save your team hours of time reporting expenses.

Supporting your team to travel sustainably

Having a sustainable travel policy in place is the first step. It’s then a case of giving your team the tools they need to make environmentally-friendly travel choices.

29% of travel managers believe employees haven’t had enough training regarding the environmental impact of business travel. And this acts as a blocker for building a sustainable travel policy.

However, 65% of employees want to work for a company with strong environmental policies. Taking steps to run a more sustainable business will improve employee morale and make hiring easier. And the steps you take toward a sustainable future will strengthen your workplace culture.

So motivation isn’t the problem. It’s all about giving your team the tools they need to make the greenest possible choices.

Empower your team to make sustainable travel choices

Make it easy for your team to arrange business travel themselves, and your sustainable travel policy will be a success.

With Bolt Business, your team has the control and flexibility to arrange travel as and when needed. Plus, we fund projects verified by Climate Impact Partners to offset emissions that we’re currently unable to reduce or eliminate.

Sustainable travel policy FAQs

What is a green travel policy?

A green travel policy allows your employees to perform their professional duties while travelling for work in a way that keeps emissions to a minimum.

What is a sustainable travel plan?

A company’s sustainable business travel policy outlines how your employees can travel for work in a way that reduces environmental impact. One of the biggest differences you can make as a company is to remove single-occupancy car travel.

What are examples of sustainable travel companies?

Bolt Business is a sustainable travel company that allows your organisation to reduce its reliance on private and company cars. Your employees can get picked up by a driver, commute on a Bolt scooter or e-bike, or use the car-sharing service Bolt Drive. Read more about Bolt’s sustainability efforts here.

Build your sustainable travel policy with Bolt Business

With Bolt Business, you can set the rules for your company’s sustainable travel policy from an online dashboard. You’ll also have the flexibility to adjust travel rules to suit different individuals and teams.

Once you’ve set up travel rules and spending limits, admins can arrange transport using Ride Booker. Each team member can decide on their own travel itinerary from the Bolt app.

Sign up with Bolt Business to make your company’s ground travel more sustainable.

How to build a sustainable travel policy

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