Government targets HR managers in drive to get businesses to adopt sustainable travel plans
Greenwise Staff
10th October 2008
The National Business Travel Network, the Department of Transport initiative to promote sustainable business travel, is to target personnel managers in a drive to increase travel planning at work.
The move comes in the wake of research just published by the National Business Travel Network (NBTN) that shows that adopting travel planning at work helps recruit and retain staff, improves productivity and creates a better company image.
The report, called Travel Plan Benefits For Employers: Making The Human Resources Link, pulled together research and statistics on a wide range of HR topics, such as graduate attitudes, recruitment trends, sickness and productivity statistics and business ethics, and concluded that work-based travel plans had a positive impact on all of them.
However, it found that despite the evidence in favour of work-based travel plans on staff, private sector HR managers had limited knowledge of travel planning and more than half did not know how to prepare a travel plan. It is estimated that only 1,200 of the UK’s two million companies have a travel plan in place.
The report also found HR departments often handled “the normal ingredients” of travel plans – such as active travel and flexible home working – separately.
Heather McInroy, programme director at the NBTN, said the research confirmed that travel plans should be part of human resources policies. “This research shows that, where a joined-up travel plan is in place, it can have a positive effect on staff recruitment, absenteeism, productivity and compliments other policies, such as corporate social responsibility, work-life balance, environmental management and occupational health.”
The report conducted a number of case studies and in the case of BT, found that a flexible work strategy was bringing significant HR benefits to the company. These included reducing staff turnover to just 2.8 per cent, achieving productivity gains of between 15-31 per cent through encouraging home working, and making savings of £220 million over 10 years, through reducing office space.
Among the recommendations made by the report, were that travel plans at work should be comprehensive and cover all means of travel, and include flexible working. They should address better health and carbon reduction strategies and should feature in corporate social responsibility policies. It also recommended that HR departments should take the lead on travel planning rather than leaving it to a separate person or team.
