Cut CO2 and improve health and productivity with sustainable commuting

Sustainable commuting is set to rise up corporate agendas as the CO2 emissions produced from staff travelling to and from work will need to be recorded under Scope 3 emissions reporting.

But aside from meeting those requirements, encouraging employees to increase their physical activity by walking or cycling on their commute also has much wider benefits.

For the employer, the improved physical and mental well-being of employees leads to fewer sick days and greater productivity, while employees also benefit from better health and a decreased risk of developing chronic diseases, says Dr Matt Sawyer, director at SEE Sustainability.

“There is a distinction between exercise and physical activity,” he adds. “With exercise, we often think we need to get some special clothes or go to a special building such as a gym or football pitch to do it, and we often see it as a sort of punishment or an atonement for our indulgence.

“But physical activity doesn’t need any of those things. It’s about moving, it’s about dancing, it’s about gardening, it’s about doing all sorts of things that are just being physically active.

“I use a standing desk and using that I actually get in at least 250 steps every hour, and that’s just by standing rather than sitting. So you don’t have to go do special places to do these things.”

However, while it may not be as strenuous as exercise, the health benefits of physical activity is well documented.

“We know that if you are doing just one bout of moderate to vigorous physical activity, you can get better sleep, feel less anxious and reduce blood pressure, so you can actually feel better immediately after doing it,” says Sawyer.

“There are also some important longer-term benefits. Being regularly physically active can lower your risk of chronic diseases such as dementia, diabetes, depression or cancer.”

From a workplace and an organisational perspective, physical activity enhances thinking, learning and judgement skills.

Physically inactive individuals also lose nearly a week a year compared to active individuals in the workplace. This is partly through absence through ill-health, but it’s also through being less efficient while at work, says Sawyer.

“Physical activity also improves overall wellbeing, so actually you get not just a healthier workforce, but a happier one as well,” he adds.

Staff survey

Sawyer says one of his clients carried out an occupational health assessment for staff insurance purposes and found its employees were “really quite unfit”.

The assessment also found they were at risk of developing health problems, so the company decided it needed to put something in place to make them physically more active.

“They built an on-site gym, but that didn’t really work. It wasn’t used very much,” he says. “So they started looking at other ways they could get people more active through the day, and the active commute was the answer.

“They spoke to their employees and realised they spent between half-an-hour to an hour in nose-to-tail traffic, not going very far or fast, every morning and evening.

“They worked out it was actually far better to get them out of their cars and walking or cycling to work, which took them the same amount of time, and suddenly they had a more physically active and healthier workforce as a result.”

Carrying out a staff survey to find out how employees currently travel to work - and how they would ideally like to - is an important first step in encouraging active commuting.

One survey with a healthcare provider found about 80% of the 400 respondents said their commute was five miles or less, and they travelled alone in their car.

“We asked how they would like to travel if it was a perfect day, with glorious weather, and the proportion who wanted to be in their car on their own fell substantially; they wanted to do something else, either be with other people in a car, on public transport, or walk or cycle to work,” says Sawyer.

If an organisation does not want to carry out a similar survey internally, there are a number of suppliers, such as Mobilityways, which specialise in this area.

The findings will enable the employee to draw up a plan to increase active travel - this could include providing secure bike storage or showers at the workplace, or simply providing more information about nearby cyclepaths or pedestrian routes.

E-bikes are a ‘gamechanger’

Employers can also offer a cycle to work scheme to give them a tax-efficient way to purchase a new bike.

As well as pushbikes, these schemes also allow employees to purchase e-bikes, and these are “revolutionary”, says Sawyer.

“With an e-bike, suddenly 10 miles is not that far. It feels like it would be a long way to walk or on a pushbike, but an e-bike changes this.

“These can be a gamechanger. They allow people who don’t think they are fit enough or able to use a pushbike to cycle.

“I’d recommend organisations hire an e-bike and let everybody try it at lunchtime. They will get this think known as the e-bike smile. They will get of the bike saying ‘that was fun’. It can make a real difference.”

Another obstacle to overcome is a lack of motivation from employees. This could be down to practical reasons such as needing to go shopping on the way home from work or living too far away, or just a lack of motivation to do something active.

However, there are measures an organisation can introduce to change behaviour.

“I often get asked how you can encourage staff to travel to work on bikes or walk when the weather’s bad,” says Sawyer.

“I say it’s not all or nothing. You don’t have to walk if its 57C below freezing or you’ve got to put the ring in the mountains of Mordor; take a taxi that day, take a bus, find another opportunity to walk or cycle to work.

“It’s not about metaphorically beating yourself or other people up because you haven’t done all of the commute all of the time on a bike or walking. It doesn’t have to be everything or nothing; for me it’s about doing as much as you can.”

For those who live too far away to cycle all the way, Sawyer says employees can split the journey by perhaps driving the first 10 miles and then cycling the remaining five, for example.

Organisations can also introduce reward schemes to encourage employees to commute by walking or cycling, and these include free coffees.

Walking or cycling can also be introduced into an employee’s working day through a sustainable mobility strategy, where they are encouraged to choose different transport modes – ranging from digital communication, walking, wheeling and cycling through to car - depending on the journey involved.