A 5-Step Guide to Sustainable Business Travel

As global environmental, social, and governance (ESG) regulations increasingly require companies to report the environmental impact of their carbon emissions, executives are asking one key question: How can we reap the benefits of in person collaboration without increasing our carbon footprint?

Taking a fresh look at your company’s travel data, policies, and tools is a great place to start. The good news is you won’t have to ground your employees. Instead, you can pull from tools around you, such as redefining what “purposeful” travel means, promoting and enabling low-emissions transportation options, and working with partners outside of your organization. But first, you’ll need to account for the carbon you’re currently emitting from business travel.

In this guide, we’ll show you how you can balance your need for business travel with your ESG commitments and how to get started tracking and reducing your entire carbon footprint.

ESG regulations like the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and California’s SB 253 and SB 261 require scope 3 reporting — which includes carbon emissions from business travel. As organizations face increased pressure to account for all of their business travel, many are looking for direction to determine when travel is necessary for employees. The key to determining what travel is truly purposeful for business might come down to your organization’s ability to use digital channels as the primary driver of productivity.

“Business will always need travel, but that travel can and should be done in a sustainable way. Enabling virtual collaboration and a digital-first work environment is the first step toward defining what purposeful travel means for your company.”

By embracing a digital HQ, you can give employees the resources and tools they need to stay productive. In this digital-first model, organizations facilitate hybrid work and enable virtual collaboration between internal and external teams. A single digital collaboration tool that provides easy access to documents, data, and group conversations across your company’s entire ecosystem improves productivity and, in the vast majority of cases, eliminates the need to gather in person.

By enabling employees to work remotely, organizations can also improve business performance and reduce costs. When companies find ways to be more efficient — with space, equipment, materials, packaging, time, and so on — they can see lower operating costs as a result.

The concept of a digital HQ works best when talking about business travel for the purpose of collaboration. It requires the right technology to be successful, but even that has its limits. If you’re trying to help teams bond, build relationships with clients, attend a large conference, or physically set up a space, travel may still be necessary, and that’s okay. Having a digital HQ allows us to rethink and redefine purposeful travel but not eliminate it altogether.