Adding an Employee Commuting Card

  • 01/10/2024
  • 5 minutes to read

Continia Sustainability incorporates a default emission source commuting feature, enabling companies to add a diverse range of emissions related to employee commuting.

Scope

Employees commuting corresponds to Category 7 of the GHG Protocol, where users must report emissions related to their employees' transportation from home to worksite and/or home office emissions.

The first may arise from land, rail, sea, air travel, or other low-carbon options such as cycling or walking, while the second is linked to the electricity and heating consumption of the employees while working from home.

Note

Continia Sustainability does not support the tracking and reporting of emissions from working from home.

To gather the data

When determining emissions from employee commuting, you can choose from three methods outlined in the GHG Protocol:

  • the fuel-based method - determines the amount of fuel consumed during commuting and applies the appropriate emission factor for that fuel.
  • the distance-based method - collects data from employees on commuting patterns (e.g., distance traveled and commuting mode) and applies appropriate emission factors for the modes used.
  • the average-data method - estimates emissions from employee commuting based on average (e.g., national) data on commuting patterns.

To simplify data collection, particularly when beginning accounting in this area, an effective strategy is to gather essential information from employees via surveys. These surveys can be distributed to either the entire workforce or a representative sample. Key data points to collect include:

  • Mode of transportation (e.g., walk, bike, motorcycle, car, bus, metro, ferry.)
  • Distance traveled (potentially categorized into distance ranges, e.g., 1-5km, 5-10km, 10-20km, etc..)
  • Frequency of commuting/homeworking or number of days traveled in a year.
  • Total number of full-time equivalent (FTE) employees.

To add an employee commuting card

After understanding how you want to gather data to track emissions from employee commuting, you can implement employee commuting cards. You have the flexibility to categorize your commuting emissions as granularly as you want. For instance, you can create a broad category encompassing all emissions related to travel for a specific office location or opt for individual cards dedicated to each type of travel.

To add an employee commuting card:

  1. Use the Search icon, enter Employee commuting, and select the related link.

  2. On the action bar, select New.

  3. On the Employee commuting card, you can now enter information for, for example, the account type and the Emission Factor Set that you want to connect your data to. Once in use, the card also shows you the total accumulated carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions balance, the last data modified, and so on. For more information on how to fill out these fields, refer to The Fields on the Environmental Account Card article.

  4. After adding all employee commuting sources to the category, the main page will provide an overview of the types and emissions balance, among other details. This page can be particularly useful for analyzing how various teams or offices commute to their worksites and exploring the potential impact of initiatives such as increased remote work or shuttle services on the company's emissions in this category.

Important

When handling employee commuting data, users must input information manually into the employee commuting journal. Before inputting figures, preliminary calculations are required. Ideally, users should report the total kilometers traveled, the number of workdays, and the number of employees for each mode of transport. However, the current system only supports reporting kilometers traveled per mode of transport. To address this, users must calculate combined data on workdays and the number of employees by multiplying the values with the mileage for each transport mode.