If business travel wasn’t on your risk radar before – it should be now

Rebecca Walker Chan charts responsible travel options in a post-COVID environment.

After months of lockdown, with face to face meetings and even global conferences having gone virtual, many workers in professional services who once travelled frequently have found themselves stranded firmly at home. My husband's typical work week pre-COVID would include a 2-3-day business trip somewhere in Asia, but after months of lockdown and travel bans, remarkably he cannot even remember the last time he flew - in February, which now seems like decades ago.

I reached out to friends, colleagues, and family members to ask what has changed for them. Inspired by this COVID-19 Traveler Study Surview, I was curious about how much the pandemic has affected their work – the answer, in short? An awful lot.

A former classmate, Director of Conservation Travel for a marine conservation non-profit, would normally travel to lead ecotourism groups in Kenya, Indonesia, Palau, Cuba, Fiji, Hawaii, and more. He has gone from 12 to 15 trips per year to not traveling at all. He shared that his company is now experiencing a shift to “no travel and no in-person staff planning meetings. We have vacated one of our offices, and at the moment 55% of our annual revenue is in jeopardy. It has become harder to achieve our conservation objectives and some donors have put pledges on hold to see what the market does.“ As to how his role might change permanently if travel remains limited, he replied “my job, as it is now, will not be possible and our organisation will need to figure out a way to reinvent the revenue stream that travel provided for us.”

He's not alone. Another respondent is a Rope Access Manager in the energy industry – think oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico or wind farms in rural Quebec – someone whose “normal work is offshore; it is a worst-case scenario for a pandemic. This work was almost completely shut down, and in my honest opinion, it is still unsafe.” Safety first was a sentiment shared by another friend who works for a University in the US and shared that on his last trip prior to the virus, he “was asked to come home early and be in quarantine for two weeks. They communicated well and made quite quick decisions for a large organisation. Safety was and still is, a paramount concern.”

“With many jobs potentially changing permanently, it's clear that roles will need to change and companies will have to be smarter and more flexible to achieve their objectives.”

With many jobs potentially changing permanently, it's clear that roles will need to change and companies will have to be smarter and more flexible to achieve their objectives. There will be more remote staffing and video conferencing, while many will have to reinvent their revenue streams to keep going. This is also a prime opportunity to review the relative costs and benefits of so much business travel. Some companies are already doing just that, with significantly less travel moving forward. Why? They experienced benefits from virtual client and supplier meetings and now feel like they can't justify going back to the way things were.

The environmentalist in me was happy to hear this. Many professionals today can work remotely with no problem and a video call is far more efficient, cost effective, and (as it stands) safer than travelling to meet in person. Cutting back on travel can also help reduce carbon footprints. This Vox video shares some great insights on the impact of flying. While it is too soon to know the lasting environmental impacts of COVID-19, we can see that with near full lockdowns, production coming to a near full stop, and travel restrictions around the world, carbon emissions have dropped dramatically (while waste has increased). Something else to make the environmentalist in me very happy.

According to the International Energy Agency, global CO2 emissions are expected to fall by 8% this year. This is roughly the equivalent of annual emissions reduction needed to limit global warming to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures. Their Global Energy Review 2020 points out that “… such a year-on-year reduction would be the largest ever, six times larger than the previous record reduction of 0.4 Gt in 2009 – caused by the global financial crisis – and twice as large as the combined total of all previous reductions since the end of World War II. As after previous crises, however, the rebound in emissions may be larger than the decline, unless the wave of investment to restart the economy is dedicated to cleaner and more resilient energy infrastructure.” Indeed, to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement it would require similar reductions every year this decade.

So, with all this in mind, what steps can businesses take to change their approach to corporate travel?

Business travel should be on your risk radar

While most employees might not know exactly what their organisation tracks and monitors in the risk department, I figured it couldn't hurt to ask them whether a pandemic was on their company’s radar. The responses were a resounding ‘no’ - perhaps unsurprisingly given that even the annual WEF Global Risk Report had missed it. What WEF have included in the top five for years running now is climate related risks. With climate change, risks from global pandemic may increase, and it's clear that in the case of COVID-19 we simply were not prepared. Most companies, it seems, had to basically wing it - meaning for some that it posed a greater risk to their company and employees. As one respondent shared; ”plans tend to go out the window after a certain amount of losses.”

But on the bright side, when it comes to risk management and contingency planning, the disruption of the pandemic has certainly inspired changes to how companies operate. Indeed, as highlighted in this Sustainalytics article, “the reaction to the coronavirus may actually be instructive for companies and sectors that were looking at a transformation.” Chief among these changes should be employee health and safety, followed by a thorough assessment of the risks of business travel.

A responsible and environmentally considerate travel policy matters

The use of technology to connect colleagues and clients does have its limitations. Not all successful business relationships and practices can be sufficiently met through technology, so some business travel will remain. With COVID-19 bringing safety concerns to the top of everyone’s radar, it is also a good time to fully flesh out under what conditions will companies ask their employees to travel – and having a written policy can help.

I also asked my contacts if their company has a travel policy – and if it includes any environmental components. Responses were mixed – some were certain that either none at all or only minimal environmental considerations are made, whereas others said that their company encourages measures such as using public transportation, looking for community supported operations, encouraging travellers to avoid single-use plastic and also booking direct flights whenever possible. None however seem to have fully realised policies that cover the truly important criteria such as offsetting emissions or recognising potentially sensitive social and political situations in destination countries.

While not hugely surprised by their responses, I did hope to hear that some companies cared about more than just the financial costs of travel, especially as there are also many other costs; a 2012 study by UNEP’s Sustainable United Nations facility on sustainable travel highlighted that there are “hidden costs such as staff time (lost productivity during travel), environmental costs and hundreds of thousands of dollars that are spent in purchasing offsets for journeys that must be undertaken… organisations that do not offset also risk the potential reputation cost if they are not seen to be behaving in an environmentally responsible manner. Finally, the impact on work-life balance of long days, nights and work on weekends can lead to stress, less work satisfaction, and ultimately less motivated and less productive staff.”

As such, it makes sense to implement a responsible and environmentally considerate travel policy. Here's why:

It can save money - making fewer trips, booking fewer business and first-class air tickets, promoting more use of public transportation, and other green strategies can have financial benefits in cost reductions.
Depending on your location, it may be a requirement – In countries where publicly listed companies are required to monitor and report their emissions, this would include emissions from business travel.
It has never been easier – there is a whole industry enabling carbon offsets and emissions credits as well as several tools in place to help with calculating corporate carbon footprints (I’m personally a fan of atmosfair, having worked on an initiative between them and UNHCR to bring fuel-efficient stoves to refugees in Rwanda).

You can also check out this handy sustainable business travel guide by Transport for London for more ideas on how to get started or improve your company’s approach to responsible travel.

The ESG Takeaway

Arguably the key takeaway for the corporate world after this pandemic is that we really can learn new things and operate and adapt business practices when we need to. But hopefully the changes made won't just be short-term.

“If we can adapt as quickly as we have in these past months to our entirely new landscape, why can’t we keep adapting to be increasingly sustainable? Why not adapt for climate change? Why not adapt to be the best employer in the market?”

Acting sustainably and truly embedding sustainable business practices into operations requires long-term thinking. This includes continual innovation, regardless if a pandemic forces us to. If we can adapt as quickly as we have in these past months to our entirely new landscape, why can’t we keep adapting to be increasingly sustainable? Why not adapt for climate change? Why not adapt to be the best employer in the market? Ultimately, it's worth remembering that of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) aspects that define sustainability - the E goes hand in hand with the S - and we can't solve one without the other.