Sustainable Travel Days

Travel has a considerable environmental impact on nature and our health. The transport sector on its own accounts for a quarter of all the European Union's greenhouse gas emissions. By 2030, the EU pledged to reduce its emissions by at least 40% compared to 1990. It is urgent to act if we are to mitigate the ecological crisis.

Lower carbon-intensive modes of transportation exist but they also come with two main challenges: price and duration. For some, the price can be mitigated but duration is not something that can be acted upon at an individual level.

For these reasons, Vizzuality incentivises the switch to more sustainable modes of transportation in the form of Sustainable Travel Days.

Goals

• Support and encourage employees to travel more sustainably
• Promote experience and knowledge sharing on sustainable travel within Vizzuality
• Carry out Vizzuality’s purpose and values to the way we operate

Guideline and conditions

With Sustainable Travel Days, employees are rewarded with extra paid time off when taking more sustainable yet time-consuming modes of transportation to go to and come back from their holiday destination.

Each employee is entitled to two extra paid days off. These can be scheduled from January 1st to January 31st of the next year. They are attributed conditionally and the employee must be able to justify that:

1. They are travelling to or back from their holiday destination by either train, bus/coach, or ferry/boat (cruise ships excluded);
2. For each of the requested Paid Journey Day, they:
   • travel for at least four hours during that day or;
   • arrive back home after having travelled during a substantial part of the night;
3. They don't use the Sustainable Travel Days to travel to or back from an airport with the intention of travelling by plane.

Employees that wish to use their Sustainable Travel Days will use the regular time off approval mechanism to confirm beforehand that their use doesn’t conflict with project schedules nor causes capacity shortages. On Bamboo, they will ask for the Sustainable Travel Days as “Unavailable” days with a note that mentions them.

In addition, employees that use their Sustainable Travel Days will be asked to share their travel plans beforehand in the #sustainable-travel Slack channel using the predefined workflow. The goal is to inspire others to spend theirs and to create accountability for their use.

Vizzuality will not ask for the tickets or receipts of the travels. The system is based on trust. If employees start to use the initiative in other ways than the ones described in this guideline, it may be re-evaluated.

Examples