Despite an often public commitment, even those organisations leading the way on sustainability continue to fail to achieve their business travel reduction targets – why is this the case and what needs to be done about it? Shelley McIvor, Partner, Global Action Plan, explores further…
Business travel really is a very quirky, complex and rather irritating sustainability challenge. We still travel in much the same way we did 50 years’ ago. Despite significant advances in technology offering viable alternatives such as teleconferencing and videoconferencing, the UK continues to spend £17.5bn a year on business travel. Despite the fact that our commutes are taking longer, are more crowded, the cost of fuel is ever rising, and talented employees are increasingly choosing organisations that offer greater work life balance, we continue to be addicted to being physically present for as many of our business interactions that our working week will physically allow.
Now, don’t get me wrong. This is not a challenge to the value of Business Travel full stop. I will be the first to tell you some good old-fashioned eyeball contact can prevent a thousand emails of misunderstanding, and deepen our connections in a way that no amount of phone calls will ever be able to replace. However, I’ve also been in many a meeting that is inefficient and totally devoid of purpose, with 12 attendees who have each travelled over an hour to get there. I also know that just being present in an office everyday doesn’t mean you’re adding value. I’m not at all convinced that we are, or ever have been, strategic, or even that conscious about most of the decisions we take to travel. It’s the unconscious communication of expectations, handed down by those who arrived before you, signalled most powerfully by the unspoken. And I don’t think we’ve stopped and reconsidered our habits in line with the fact we’re now in the 21st century, with all the flexibility, expectations, risks, challenges and opportunity that brings.
So, where do we begin?
It’s emotional
Over the last 50 years a large part of what it meant to be a ‘high flier’, someone of value to your organisation, was the distance the company sent you around the world. The more valuable you are, the more you travel. When you are someone of importance you receive a company car. When you are even more important, you get a car-parking space right outside the front entrance. We have so strongly tied hierachy and social status to business travel, that it threatens our very sense of who we are to challenge these norms. However, whilst you may have a few vocal addicts to business travel, there is a slow but sure emerging realisation, however unconscious, that travel is not always the smartest option, for the business, the employee or the environment.
Measuring true cost
It’s extraordinary, given the number of employee hours we dedicate to the act of travel in each of our organisations, how little oversight we have of it. Most organisations focus on cost of ticket as their measure of travel, however in order to measure true cost to the business, the following wider business case needs to be considered:
- End-to-end cost, not just cost of ticket;
- Staff productivity losses during travel;
- Business value created by the journey;
- Infrastructure costs (eg: car-parking spaces, larger buildings operated)
- Employee engagement and stress levels;
- Staff risk and safety.
Only once you begin to measure the wider impact of business travel can you make a true judgement call on what the smartest options are for your organisation.
A question of scale
When working with organisations I’m often told travel just isn’t a priority, that there are many other infrastructural or technology-driven changes that reduce a far greater percentage of their CO2 footprint. However, for a significant number of employees in every organisation, generally those in back-office or head-office roles, travel is the greatest difference they can personally effect. Furthermore, I would argue that until these employees see something meaningful being done around travel, a seed of doubt will always remain as to the veracity and commitment of the organisation to its sustainability agenda.
No Winner Takes it All
The reality is the business case benefits of more sustainable travel are enjoyed by many functions across the business, and therefore ownership is dispersed and nearly always lacking. Whenever implementing smarter travel programmes, a key part of our role at Global Action Plan has been to bring the business case together from the four corners of the organisation – HR benefit from increased engagement, wellbeing and staff productivity, Finance are always delighted to see expenses and cost reduce, Risk appreciate the improved staff safety, Sustainability value the CO2 saving. It is rare this exercise can be done internally, partly because travel tends to be owned by a relatively junior member of staff, normally within Finance or Procurement, whose measure of success tends to boil down to a single KPI: reducing ticket prices.
Of the few business travel programmes currently live in the UK, the most successful are those that are led from the top who are able to see a cross-organisational view of the benefits to the business. A great example of this is Ronan Dunne and his Board at O2 Telefonica UK, who have personally led the employee engagement campaigns around flexiworking and smarter working practices. Throughout, they have continually reflected the business case back into the business and rather than approaching through a dictation of travel policy, they have focused on empowering employees to make smarter, more productive, more sustainable choices.
However, very few Board members are so personally or strategically motivated to see us challenge our ways of working in the 21st century, in fact they tend to scoff at the idea that travel is a leadership agenda. And they also tend to be individuals who themselves have built their careers and success upon 20th century travel habits, and are often the least likely to want to see changes. So, how do you engage and motivate the level of leadership needed?
We believe there are three key elements to addressing this. The first is for the travel footprint data and its story to be presented meaningfully. Once the full impact of business travel has been put onto one page, and compared against the relatively little strategic thought that has been given to it, we see lightbulb moments. The second is to create a tipping point through a series of early case studies that bring to the fore that this challenge is there to be addressed and it is worthwhile to do so. With these two first elements in mind, earlier this year we created a fund with The Rail Partnership (Trainline.Com Business, East Coast Trains, Virgin Trains and FirstScot Rail) to support those business leaders willing to take an early lead on this agenda. The fund provides a review of an organisation’s travel data, habits and culture, with high-level recommendations around infrastructure, policy and behaviour-change opportunities. It will also provide UK plc with much needed early case studies that celebrate the busincess-case opportunity and begin to build a new set of expectations on businesses and its norms. The third element is regulationary pressure, which the later phases of Mandatory Carbon Reporting are promising. Hopefully the simple act of measuring and publishing organisational travel footprint, will act as enough of a prompt to warrant new attention on this issue.
Carrot not stick
I’ve noticed an extraordinary pattern with business travel. It is one of the most emotional working practices we have to tackle around sustainability, yet we tend to do so with the bluntest of instruments – a travel ban. We try and take travel out of the business, rather than thinking through when and how it creates value for us. Furthermore, we ignore the personal benefits employees have in the current working practices, which is always a surefire way to make any ground you do win short term.
Looking Forward
We’re certainly nowhere near what Arthur C Clarke predicted for us in 1964:
“Advances in technology will make instant contact possible, regardless of physical location… Men will no longer commute, they will communicate. They will no longer have to travel for business any more, they will travel purely for pleasure.”
Fundamentally, our approach to business travel has become a hindrance to communication rather than it’s servant. Like every other part of business in today’s climate, the way we travel needs to get smart. We need to rethink the options that are best, in today’s world, for the business, its employees and the environment we work within. Whilst it is certainly not an easy problem to overcome, and extra helpings of analysis, courage and thick skin are required by those of us who are tackling it, there really are no excuses left that are good enough.
Global Action Plan is an environmental behaviour change charity working with businesses, schools, youth, hospitals and communities to act today in a positive, fun and powerful way.
