Average commuting distances for each city and mode are used to determine the total of kilometres travelled. Employees homes represent their private sphere and organizations need to tread carefully so as not to overreach. Center for Corporate Climate Leadership Home, GHG Inventory Development Process & Guidance, Corporate GHG Inventorying and Target Setting Self-Assessment, Reporting Corporate Climate Risks and Opportunities, Direct emissions (known as Scope 1): from onsite combustion and mobile sources, Indirect emissions (Scope 2): from purchased electricity and steam. Now, companies are experimenting with different models of remote work as we come out of the crises. Employees may well weigh up the probability of them winning something when deciding whether it is worth completing a survey therefore any cost should be balanced against this. Some policies (e.g., automatically switching to the cheapest green energy tariffs and tips for reducing emissions around the home) may be useful to all employees. This includes other GHGs and is why I have not been referring solely to a carbon footprint throughout this article. Because this is a gray area, however, many companies seem to be placing employee commutes outside their GHG inventories out of convenience, rather than out of a sound reading of international guidance. Looking at existing policies is an important first step, but it is often not enough. 1. After you see how much employee commutes contribute to your companys carbon footprint, you can get to work reducing those emissions. In getting your corporate house in order, the first step is defining where your yard ends and your neighbor's begins. These and other employer decisions are factors proven to directly impact employee commute behavior. Analyze and report your water consumption data, either from invoice or supplier data or directly from the meter. Many worker signs said the return-to-office mandate and commuting ran counter to the company's efforts to reduce carbon emissions. These surveys can be done on paper or digitally, though of course there are a number of significant advantages to the digital option. A what-if scenario was demonstrated with graphs and metrics calculated in real time to show the specific carbon emission impact of changing the percentage of time spent working remotely. Like other indirect sources of emissions, in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol this is accounted for in scope 3. This feature provides a data model schema, ingestion of activity data, default calculation model, and reporting for scope 3 category 7: Employee commuting in Microsoft Sustainability Manager. When employees do still need to go to a main workplace other than their home, employers should consider other options. After all, an employer cant control whether Tim from HR rides the bus to work. In fact, its a gray area, according to the GHG Protocol, which offers broad guidance to companies working through this issue. Demographic measures and dimensions were acquired from SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics using the standard SAP Analytics Cloud connector. So, what are companies to do? The generosity of these schemes and the range of vehicles available will partly be down to the company, with of course other influences including government and business policies towards the EV sector. There are a number of options and of course some will overlap with those being used to reduce fleet and other business travel emissions. SAP Business Technology Platform was then able to use external Web services and geo-location services to calculate the travel distance and travel time to work by various means of transport. However, environmental footprints will vary substantially across individuals, teams, companies, and industries. JavaScript appears to be disabled on this computer. Make it interesting : Whilst there may be a rather small sub-set of people out there that enjoy populating travel surveys, this is unlikely to be the majority! United States As promised, we have delivered SAP Sustainability Control Tower to help enable holistic enterprise-wide sustainability performance management. Carbon-Neutral Commuter - Sustainability - University of Florida In the UK, recycling increased during the first lockdown; this aligns with past research showing that employees adopt more sustainable waste practices at home than at the office. Generally the literature confirms the mantra that Cash is King and that sweepstakes are not shown to be any better or worse than no incentive when influencing my own response rates. Alyssa Rade is the chief sustainability officer atSustain.Life. Scope Breakdown All other organization-related mobile source emissions, including employee commuting, employee travel, and upstream/ downstream third-party transportation emissions, such as those associated with transporting material inputs or product distribution, are considered scope 3 indirect emissions. Depending on where your workforce is located, it may be more appropriate to focus on emissions reduction from cooling versus heating, or both. Faced with an ambitious sustainability agenda and carbon-lowering targets, one SAP customer wanted to go further and consider the employee wishes for home/office work, and the carbon emissions generated from their commute to work against the energy efficiency of their home offices. To calculate scope 3 category 7: Employee commuting, organizations need a way to collect data on employee commutes. Developing sustainability policies that yield co-benefits (e.g., environmental and financial benefits), ensures that organizations can concurrently promote their employees well-being and work outcomes towards their sustainability goals. What to do next: Calculate your roundtrip commuting emissions with Sustain.Lifes carbon calculator, then decide how to curb those emissions with work from home policies and transit benefit programs. Consider joining or starting a companyGreen Teamto reduce environmental impacts, improve sustainability, communicate best practices, and coordinate company education or volunteer programs. We manage and centralize utility, CSR and ES&G programs, providing regional support to deliver local language expertise across established and emerging markets. The GHG protocol distinguishes between 3 different methods to account for Employee Commute-related emissions: Fuel-based, Distance-based, and Average . Look for ENERGY STAR computers, copiers, printers, lighting, heating and cooling equipment, appliances and more. Alongside paying attention to the specific circumstances and contexts of employees to better understand the dimensions of environmental impacts, it is crucial to embed a culture of sustainability through providing support, policies, and leadership for employees. Keeping questions short, injecting a little humour or real-world examples and using fun graphics could all help make the survey more interesting. In 2020, SAP committed to enable companies to report on the WEFs Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics. Getting involved in sustainable activities at work can be a fun and easy way to improve your own skills and expertise, and can even help improve your co-worker relationships by working together on a cause bigger than the bottom line. Commuter Choiceis a partnership between the Federal Highway Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency designed to help employers create customized solutions to their employees commuting challenges. Heres why thats a big deal. And commuting accounts for about 30% of all miles driven in the U.S. For a knowledge-based business, employees are at the very core of the organizations operations, and how they get to and from work matters. In fact, when multiple environmental net impacts are taken into consideration, including factors like energy and technology usage, WFH is not a clear win for the environment. The GHG Protocol does provide general guidance on this issue, but more specific direction is needed. Access additional programs to help your company reduce emissions. Many companies will offer zero emission vehicles now and / or subsidies for the purchase of one. Providing an out-of-the-box standard for this mechanism of data alignment and calculation enables reporting on this category, giving an organization a complete view of its carbon footprint. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. In doing so, organizations can ensure that WFH stacks up on a comprehensive set of sustainability measures and that they achieve their sustainability goals. Equally problematic is that the primary short-term WFH policy adopted by several companies has been to provide employees with laptops, even at the risk of duplicating devices. The average person drives over 2,000 miles to and from work according to the 2009 National Household Travel Survey. A cash incentive will likely be more attractive to those on lower salaries than those on very high ones. Whilst we do need to accept that this arrangement is not the best for everyone and there will likely always be times when teams do need to get together, it is now seen by many as likely that we will see a lasting shift in home working practices. Start ateRideShare.coma free national service connecting commuters and travelers, ZimRide for companies, or visit The Rideshare Company. One way of looking at the issues of return to office or hybrid work is from a business sustainability perspective. This will only be open to employees via the companys IT systems so assuming all employees to be surveyed exist on the same IT ecosystem, then everyone can complete this without ever having to go via a third party. It is recommended that the GHG footprint should be in CO2 equivalent (often shown in kgCO2e or tCO2e). When considering the carbon footprint of employee commuting, we define this as the journey between an employees home and their contracted place of work. Risk: They contribute to the companys GHG risk exposure. The We only take and store generalized data to create calculations based on the GHG Protocol method for scope 3 category 7. Companies may also consider using consultancies and other dedicated third parties to support part or the entire process of calculating a GHG footprint. Employee commuting, business travel, and waste management can also be material contributions to your office's GHG emissions. As businesses continue to determine the environmental and financial impacts of this shift to remote work, estimating the carbon footprint, energy use and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of working from home is a new activity with little or no precedent although brief reference . This kind of sustainability data and analysis empowers executives to find the sweet spot in decisions that balance their preferences against employee preferences and align them to important goals such as reducing their carbon footprint. We know that residential buildings account for approximately 20% of energy consumption. This would require implementing next-generation holistic steering and reporting that maps operational and experiential data to show progress on goals such as reducing the carbon footprint of the business. GHG, Carbon, Energy, CSR on a Single Platform. The mode of transportation should gradually be targeted for reductions in emissions. Should we pull carbon out of the air with trees, or machines? PDF Guide to Greenhouse Gas Management for Small Business Twenty-seven percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are from transportation sources, including emissions generated by employees traveling for office-related business and commuting to and from their jobs. Chandler, AZ 85226-2520, Tel: (888) 988-5474 In September 2021, we set our most ambitious and important goal yet: to reach net zero across our value chain by 2040 by prioritizing deep emissions reductions across all scopes of emissions. While your companys mileage may vary (pun intended)especially with the shift to remote and hybrid workmany employees still create GHG emissions from their commuting behaviors, which contribute to climate change. If a Scope 3 area (such as employee commuting) accounts for a significant portion of the organizations overall emissions, then the guidance suggests the company should include these within its GHG inventory. Pedestrian laws & safety; Passenger rail. Employee commuting Definition | Law Insider SAP built a proof of concept (PoC) application in just one day once the employee survey was collected. For the latest documentation, go to the Microsoft Dynamics 365 documentation. This record keeping is usually with Human Resources team or Finance team in a corporate. Centralize your CSR performance data from various departments and align it to the GRI standard. That includes measuring employees' at-home energy usage. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol: A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard is the playbook everyone is working from. How often: Annually, quarterly, or monthly. The challenge is open to U.S. employers with the aim of having them provide charging for a portion of plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) driving employees. If this segment has a different average travel profile to those employees that are online (more likely to be in corporate functions), then a company could significantly under- or over-estimate total commuting GHG emissions. (LogOut/ All of the textual responses are compiled anonymously or compiled by respondents office location or by name. Employee commuting calculations include emissions from the transportation of employees between their homes and their worksites. For example, one companys workforce might rely heavily on technology, so helping reduce emissions from e-waste and energy is especially important. Many employees, it found . One idea is to take a few long lunches. The good news: There is a clearly accepted international standard providing guidance to companies sorting "what's in" and "what's out" for their GHG inventory. As a fully independent organization, C2ES is solely responsible for its positions, programs, and publications. Employee commuting has historically been one of the most challenging metrics for a multinational organization to get a handle on. Companies will need to choose whether they present their commuting performance as an absolute GHG footprint i.e. incentive. Emissions from employee commutes are one such gray area. Known as one of the greenest commercial buildings in the world, since it opened its doors on Earth Day in 2013 the Bullitt Center has been setting a new standard for sustainable design. GHG Inventory Guidance for Low Emitters | US EPA Doing so would encourage more efficient commuting habits such as electric vehicle charging facilities, bike storage, or better shower facilities for those who would run to the office. The percentage of people working from home in the U.S. alone rose from 5% to 37% during the height of the pandemic. What to include: Employee travel between home and the workplace via personal vehicle, public transit, and other vehicles (e.g., motorcycle, electric scooter). Free accounts however will usually only allow for a limited number of questions e.g. While business travel may be easier to document, employee commuting typically falls through the cracks. Vervantis Inc. is an energy, sustainability, and utility bill management specialist providing advice, software, and expertise to large and medium-sized companies across North America. Check out the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys Green Conference Initiative to find tips on how to organize environmentally responsible meetings and events. The integrated survey is optimized to have minimal questions, but to accurately cover all combinations of modes of transport, ride-sharing, even rollerblading, and includes out of office travel, part-time, and accounts for holidays. Fax: (480) 336-2887, Easy to use custom survey building, yet optimised for commuting surveys, Surveys can be created in many different languages, Unless employees are wind-surfing to the office, your covered, Just like mainstream survey builders, there are 10 different question styles from multiple choice to numeri, The survey is optimised for smart phone usage (*Coming Aug 2018), Chase thousands of non-responders with a single click, Use the survey to seek suggestions for improvement, Instantly display a respondents result in Co2e relative to their colleagues in other parts of the world, Got a weird requirement? These options can also reduce the stress of commuting and save you money. This is similar to rates used by several companies I have worked with in the past. YouTube, Follow us on Copyright 2023 Sustain.LifeAll rights reserved. Our integrated employee commuter survey is such a time-saver; you will wonder what to do with your day. For some, it might be creating a bike-to-work program or incentives for carpooling and rideshares or taking public transportation. Employee commuting is a significant source of Scope 3 emissions for many companies, accounts for around 10-15% of a company's Scope 3 emissions. Other commuting modes include: bus, ferry, motorbike/scooter, train, and light rail/tram. Waste reduction makes good business sense because it can save your organization money through reduced purchasing and waste disposal costs. Whilst you could deduct the fuel consumption from business travel using mileage claims it would be very challenging to separate commuting from other private journeys on a fuel card. Fortunately, green travel options exist, such as opting for a hybrid rental car, purchasing carbon offsets to minimize business travel footprints, or staying in a green hotel. PDF Estimating Energy Consumption & GHG Emissions for Remote Workers This will affect anonymity and also have GDPR impacts. This means considering first what are the existing social norms and perceptions for addressing remote (and in-house) employees travel, technology, waste, and energy emissions, and then designing ways to decrease these emissions through addressing how people interact with each of these practices. Instead, we rely on our readers topitch in what they can so that we can continue bringing you our solution-based climate news. However, I would also add that communication of the survey is crucial. EPA Center for Corporate Climate Leadership, webinars on developing an inventory and reducing GHG emissions. Calculate GHG emissions using the Simplified GHG Emissions Calculator. These tools and guidance are intended for companies calculating emissions from US-based operations. In a matter of weeks millions of employees across the UK switched from predominantly office-based roles to working from home. So while an employer cant control whether Tim from HR rides the bus to work, there are indeed many factors fully within an employers control that significantly influence Tims decision. Meta Platforms Inc , owner of Facebook, estimated 61,000 mtCO2e in 2020 combined from employee commuting and remote work by its about 58,600 employees that year. Just as leaders need to walk the talk, they also need they also need to let employees choose how they implement the policies offered. As part of our commitment to sustainability, in 2021 Grist moved its office headquarters to the Bullitt Center in Seattles vibrant Capitol Hill neighborhood. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. Its vital reporting made entirely possible by loyal readers like you. At Grist, we dont believe in paywalls. CarbonWise commuting emissions software. The additional time and cost will need to be weighed against the total coverage of the workforce. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol uses an example of a 25% response rate as a suitable level of coverage for a company to calculate a reasonable commuting GHG footprint. Should emissions from employee commutes be included in company - Grist Contrary to the common mantra, if you will build it, they will come, in the case of surveys that is not always true. Emissions from transportation of employees to and from work are accounted for in scope 3, category 7 (Employee commuting). An official website of the United States government. Measure Remote Work's Impact on Corporate Sustainability | Salesforce Report aggregated results, or individual sites or assets instantly, 100% transparency of all calculations, and change logs, Flexible custom reporting to suit any requirement. PDF Category 7: Employee Commuting - GHG Protocol The savings can be dramatic; an ENERGY STAR computer uses 30-65 percent less electricity than other computers. And understanding your companys CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) emissions from employee commutes means you can then decide how to reduce those emissions. As remote work models become increasingly popular, fewer of employees sustainability impacts are likely to take place under employers physical roofs, however, they will still occur on their watch. September 29, 2020 / thegreenmuse89 When considering the carbon footprint of employee commuting, we define this as the journey between an employee's home and their contracted place of work. Available in national or international mode, the software automatically keeps its 62,000 emissions factors up to date so you dont have to. Emissions from employee commuting may arise from: Automobile travel Bus travel Rail travel Air travel Other modes of transportation (e.g., subway, bicycling, walking). Vervantis commercial energy consultants serve multiple countries and geographies providing a single solution for outsourced energy & sustainability expertise for businesses. Individual companies are left to decide whether such emissions are in or out. It also possible that employees contracted to work will be the norm. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. In short, by measuring and tracking your commuting emissions, mitigation strategies become apparent. Employee Commuting - Capture Metrics Quickly, Easily And Accurately By looking at where the majority of the skills required by a company are, perhaps this opportunity can be taken to locate closer to the workforce. Company influence: There are potential emission reductions that could be undertaken or influenced by the company. It may well be advisable therefore during any employee consultation and planning that the option for a paper-based version be discussed. This data is in direct contrast to what most executives report that they want in post-pandemic workforce policies. Read how to calculate business travel emissions. Report scope 3 category 7 employee commuting | Microsoft Learn The GHG Protocol identifies 3 methods for calculating emissions: Emissions factors should be used from a reliable source for each mode of transport. My own experience suggests that sweepstakes are better than nothing, however. Document development of a GHG inventory to ensure consistency as your organization collects data each year to track progress toward reaching an emissions reduction goal using the Americans made an estimated 459 million one-person trips for business in 2015. How we manage the trains; Train safety; Mobile app and Twitter; Operations & services.