Gaining senior management support
Why promote sustainable travel to senior management?
Gaining the support of senior management can be crucial in promoting sustainable travel in your workplace. This toolkit can be used to promote sustainable travel to senior members of staff. You could use it as a letter, an email, a print out or any other medium you see fit.
What this toolkit offers
This toolkit provides a list of reasons which you can pitch to senior staff members to convince them as to your business should promote sustainable travel. You may wish to tailor this information to your specific organisation and emphasise the most important points. For example, if there are issues with car parking at your site, this could be the trigger that convinces management to buy into promoting sustainable travel.
How to gain senior management support
In order to gain support, you should:
- Ask for a statement from the Chairman or Managing Directors showing their commitment and support to sustainable travel aims and objectives.
- Appoint a dedicated Travel Plan Co-ordinator to lead the promotion sustainable travel measures.
- Secure funding to support the successful development of the planned actions.
Promoting sustainable travel to senior management
Reducing the number of single occupancy car trips for business and commuting travel can result in a range of benefits for organisations:
- Reduced travel expenses: reducing business mileage can generate large savings. Initiatives such as implementing teleconferencing facilities, using car club vehicles and replacing shorter car journeys with walking and cycling can cut costs significantly.
- Fewer sick days and improved staff morale: a number of studies have demonstrated that active travel reduces the amount of sick days staff take, as a result of improved health. This will save your business money by increasing staff productivity.
- Tackles parking issues: solving problems caused by demand for parking and reducing the cost of providing and maintaining parking spaces would enable more clients to access the site.
A study involving over 1200 employees found that, on average, cyclists were absent from work for 7.4 days a year compared to 8.7 days a year for non-cyclists. There was also a relationship between distance, commute frequency and degree of absenteeism, with more cycling equating to less absenteeism.
- Reduces car park congestion
- Improves access to your site for both staff and visitors
- Improving travel options to your site can assist in accessing a greater staff catchment area and improve staff retention
- Provides a boost to the image of your organisation and can assist in achieving environmental and sustainability accreditation
- Being a good neighbour – reducing congestion and parking issues within your local community can lead to better relations with community stakeholders
- Being a good corporate citizen in helping to address sustainability issues such as climate change and air pollution
Promoting sustainable travel at the workplace results in more active travel such as walking and cycling among staff, which in turn:
- Contributes to the recommended level of daily physical activity which reduce the likelihood of obesity and cardiovascular diseases
- Reduces stress levels and helps prevent depression, thereby improving mental health of staff
- Helps to counter the negative health impacts of sedentary desk-based work and lifestyles
