Why employee buy-in is essential for a sustainable business travel programme

With the industry now more aware than ever of the impact business travel has on the environment, it’s our responsibility as a sector to take meaningful action towards minimising its effect. This shared objective has driven many companies across the world to develop and implement more sustainable travel programmes.

These programmes may prioritise domestic rail over air travel, ensure hotel selections meet a minimum standard, or allocate carbon budgets that each individual or business unit’s travel must fit within. But it’s not enough to simply add new policies, your employees must be on board with them too.

However strategic, calculated and well-meaning your new sustainability policies are, without securing employee buy-in and compliance, they won’t be able to drive measurable sustainability results for your business.

Climate change affects us all, so why is it so hard to get buy-in?

Every one of us will feel the effects of climate change, and we share a collective role in mitigating its effects on our environment. So, with this common goal in mind, why isn’t everyone automatically on board?

There can be many hurdles on the road to employee buy-in, one of the biggest to overcome is when sustainability initiatives aren’t integrated into the organisation’s business strategy and performance targets.

When this issue arises, employees could consider compliance as an optional extra task to add to their day-to-day responsibilities, with no incentive or direction on how to incorporate new policies. This grows into an even larger concern when the efforts of those who do contribute are not recognised, or the sustainability function is allocated to a business area that lacks the capacity and processes to deliver real results.

An organisation gains much more support and compliance from employees when sustainability priorities and actions are embedded within the overall strategy of the business, with clear communication to ensure the team fully understands that what they’re being asked to do is well within the scope of their role.

Clear, consistent messaging combined with powerful travel booking tools that not only allow but actively encourage travel bookers to make better choices for the environment, will improve the likelihood of achieving organisational sustainability goals. In action this could involve encouraging travel bookers to be more selective with their travel plans, giving them the power to search for flights with the lowest carbon emissions or opt for an electric vehicle rental instead, with a full understanding of the financial and carbon costs of each option.

Consult with your travellers

It’s worth keeping in mind that your travelling workforce are key stakeholders within the business, and it’s important not to underestimate the value they can contribute in determining your material sustainability topics.
Without aligning the sustainability strategy and goals with what matters to employees, it’ll be an uphill battle trying to convince them of the organisational importance and benefits. In turn, the likelihood of compliance, and therefore success, will drop.

Ideally, the road to securing behaviour change needs to blend professional responsibility and personal engagement – in other words, winning hearts and minds. Failing to secure this can significantly damage a corporate’s ability to achieve targets – or even make progress for that matter. Or, worse still, employees might perceive your organisation’s sustainability efforts as surface-level, insincere, or just a tick-box exercise to please external stakeholders. When this is the case, employees will likely have a hard time believing they should take the suggested actions and lose interest in the expectations and requests being made of them.

On the other end of the scale, a corporate travel manager and HR team who consult and engage their travelling employees during the beginning stages of constructing the strategy will see much better results when it’s rolled out. By engaging employees early on, you’ll be able to understand which topics matter to them most and which have the biggest impact on them. Incorporate employee-identified topics into the strategy to create a value-based alignment to a joint cause amongst employees, resulting in improved compliance.

Other benefits include:

• Enhanced workplace culture, wellness and productivity, with employees feeling more listened to and valued by their employers.
• Improved attraction and retention of top-performing talent
• As mentioned, boosted chances of achieving corporate sustainability targets which help to support carbon emission reduction efforts across the business travel industry.

Getting employees onboard

Aside from early engagement, what other action can the industry, HR and sustainability managers take to get employees onboard with sustainable business travel programmes?

Solid, honest, consistent communication explaining the what and the why behind sustainable travel initiatives will help create a better connection between employees and the overarching goals of the business and give them a better understanding of why compliance is mandatory for social license for the business to operate and the planet.

Outline your expectations of employees as early as you can. As mentioned earlier, prioritising employee engagement is a vital step in discovering the material sustainability issues that are important to your travelling workforce and the overall strategy and outcomes of the business.

Sustainability needs to be woven throughout all relevant functions of a business’s operational areas – your organisation’s sustainability journey should not start and end with your travel programme. Core objectives should be decided on collaboratively with a clear plan to recognise and reward the contributions and successes of your team. The aim of this is to make sustainability a natural part of everyone’s working day to achieve maximum buy-in.

Empowered employees who are primed with the correct tools and streamlined decision-making processes are in the best position to deliver on sustainability ambitions. In practice, an organisation may give each individual or department a carbon budget to gently nudge business travellers to be carbon-conscious at the point of booking.

Sustainability is not a one-off exercise, nor should it be presented as one to your employees. It’s important to regularly report on the progress you are making together towards key objectives so that your team understands the real impact of their actions. Choose a few key areas to regularly update them on, explain the role their compliance plays in your progress and create open channels for honest feedback.