Sustainability is becoming a focus for many businesses. This can only be a good thing. It’s kinder to the planet and it can also have various business benefits, from employee retention to consumer engagement. One of the ways your company can support more environmentally friendly operations is by creating sustainable policies for business travel.
There are various strategies you can employ to ensure eco-conscious traveling. Yet, it’s also important to recognize that the legal landscape of traveling for work can be quite complex. When making decisions about your company’s journeys, bearing in mind how employment legislation and regulations affect your choices enables you to develop positive protocols without risking legal consequences.
Promoting Working From Home
When designing a sustainable transportation policy for your business, a good place to start is to reduce the need for daily commuting. Remote work is becoming increasingly accessible for businesses of all sizes. Importantly, it reduces the emissions and fuel use associated with your employees’ journeys to work and meetings.
Not to mention that remote work is a good way to track and improve your corporate sustainability through the use of digital tools. Utilizing reliable telecommunication software enables your workers to interact efficiently without overusing resources and producing excessive waste. Integrated data analytic tools can also provide you with insights into how practices like working from home are enhancing your sustainability and where there may be areas for improvement.
At the same time, you need to be cognizant of how enabling working from home affects your legal responsibilities as an employer. Giving your employees a little freedom about where they work is great. However, if they cross state lines, this may affect your company’s adherence to local working hours and minimum wage compliance laws.
In addition, your company is usually legally responsible for ensuring accessibility compliance even for your remote workers. While you have limited control over the environment they choose to work from, you must still demonstrate a willingness to provide reasonable accommodations.
This may include subsidizing or delivering ergonomic office equipment. Ensuring your digital tools are compatible with screen readers and other supportive systems is also a good step. Designing clear processes to include accommodations as part of your remote working protocols keeps your company sustainable while also compliant.
Encouraging Green Personal Vehicle Use
Many businesses can’t quite stretch their budgets to invest in company cars for workers, instead allowing workers to use their own vehicles. Indeed, this approach can form a solid part of a sustainable business travel policy. You can encourage a carpooling system that cuts down on the per-employee emissions and fuel used. Encourage them to use resources, such as route mapping apps, to establish efficient journeys that minimize environmental damage.
There are various pros and cons to using a personal vehicle for business. Employee owners can make tax deductions and have greater control over their journeys than they would with public transport. At the same time, there are certain risks related to liability, insurance, and vehicle wear and tear. As an employer, you have a certain amount of legal and ethical responsibility to help your workers address these risks if personal vehicles are to be part of your sustainability policy.
Perhaps the most important legal issue to be mindful of here is respondeat superior liability. Effectively, this states that your company can be held responsible for accidents or injuries caused by employees away from the workplace when on company errands. What falls under the definition of company errand can be complex.
The obvious things, such as traveling to business meetings and conferences or to fetch business resources may certainly fall under the legislation. Though, daily commutes may not. At the same time, if you explicitly expect workers to use their vehicles to work as part of your sustainability policy, accidents during their commutes could conceivably fall under the required vehicle exception of this legislation.
It is always best to err on the side of caution if you expect personal vehicle use as part of a sustainability policy. You should subsidize or contribute to vehicle maintenance, which can both reduce accidents while also ensuring the green efficiency of the vehicle. Arranging safe driving courses for workers can also be positive. Importantly, make certain you have sufficient liability insurance to cover potential incidents.
Implementing Sustainable Long-Distance Travel
Occasionally, you may need to send workers on trips away for meetings, conferences, and even professional training. Unfortunately, this can result in fuel use, emissions, and waste that puts pressure on the environment. Wherever possible, schedule meetings remotely. However, if such trips are unavoidable, you should build guidelines to reduce environmental impact into your sustainability policy.
One prevalent issue here involves arranging flights to meetings and conventions. This can seem particularly convenient when these are across the country or even in neighboring cities. Yet, recent studies have shown that train and bus journeys tend to produce significantly less CO2 emissions than their plane counterparts. Choosing to arrange public ground travel is a more sustainable option.
From an employment law perspective, you also need to consider that this aspect of your policy may result in your employees traveling for longer hours. On a Federal level, travel time during which employees have to be paid is usually restricted to travel during work hours or while actively performing their duties. There are some states that go beyond this, though. For instance, California considers any travel time longer than the employee’s daily commute to be compensable. It is, therefore, essential to review local labor laws and establish wage and overtime rates that consider extra hours traveled to ensure sustainability.
Conclusion
There are various employment law elements to bear in mind when developing sustainable travel policies. These include accessibility regulations for working from home and your liability when staff use personal vehicles, among other things. Remember that laws change as the employment landscape shifts. Just as you may update your sustainability policies over time, keeping on top of regulations can help you build a more holistically positive business for all stakeholders and the planet.
Featured Photo by Oleksandr P
