How to drive Sustainable Mobility as a partner!

Our industry is under constant pressure to improve its environmental sustainability. But can our insignificant effort really make a difference, or is everything simply well-intentioned platitudes and greensheening?

While business travel and international mobility assignments are gradually returning, even though the pandemic is unlikely to end completely in 2023, mobility professionals are starting to ask new questions, such as: What sustainability gains were made during the pandemic, and how can the mobility function support the business in maintaining those gains and re-entering the post-pandemic world in a more responsible way?

Society's determination to save our world from future disastrous calamities and disruptions is becoming clearer as we reach year three of the pandemic and as extreme climatic events become more frequent. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a significant change in how businesses approach the sustainability issue. In a recent Deloitte poll, 89% of CXOs said that there is a climate catastrophe and that the time for action is now.

Vishal Agarwal has been an avid sustainability driver, long before he took the helm as the CEO of Interem India. “It’s no longer time to just listen, but to act and embed climate considerations into every aspect of business."

In order to integrate significant sustainability efforts into their core company goals, operations, and cultures, employers are now adapting and inventing mobility solutions while addressing internal regulations and practises. Most businesses are purposefully minimising air travel and educating staff members about their activities and impacts on the environment. Businesses are going through a huge transition as they work towards being "net-zero," and the epidemic has sped up the accomplishment of sustainability goals by drastically reducing travel and consumption. Expectations from customers and employees about how businesses should react to sustain these achievements are increasing and taking centre stage. The amount of government and regulatory monitoring is also?increasing. “Every step we take has to be measured and optimised for energy expenditure and it’s impact on the environment. We are responsible for our carbon footprint, at the end of the day”, Vishal notes.

Global assignments assist in the development of culture, cooperation, and creativity in ways that cannot be accomplished in a virtual environment, in addition to bringing people to the location of a job or vocational "on the job" training. It's important to strike a balance. Global assignments will be ?crucial in the future, but they must be done in a sustainable way if businesses are to drive the next wave of growth. Businesses are eager to get the right people back in the right locations.

Vishal opiniates “Is it possible to attain net-zero overnight, no! It’s a collective effort. At Interem all our activities are aimed at reducing carbon emissions to the best of our abilities and evaluating it’s impact on environment”. The difficulty is that it isn't always clear how the mobility function influences the sustainability agenda. The science might be difficult to understand if you get past simple solutions like changing the amount of assignments or accounting for carbon offsets. Therefore, in order to make choices for the future, mobility leaders will need to either comprehend the science themselves or locate a professional they can rely on to assist them with the more technical parts.

The Mobility function has been given the opportunity to begin imagining what sustainable mobility ought to look like because CXOs are empowering their business functions to critically consider how to incorporate sustainability goals into their operations as a result of new growth that is now on the horizon. This includes evaluating the value that mobility assignments bring to the company and considering how those goals may be more sustainably attained. Instead of trying to cut down on the number of mobility assignments, this is an effort to reconsider the overall strategy and goal of these assignments.

The initiation of supply chain reviews by global mobility functions is another rising trend. Recent findings show that global mobility executives are aware that reviewing and challenging their vendor ecosystem is a necessary component of the sustainability solution. Vishal says “Across the board, we are integrating sustainability into activities and policy. Additionally, we're giving our employees and partners the tools they need to make climate-friendly decisions and persuade others to do the same

Organizations are assessing their assignment policy holistically to see if there are any additional measures to encourage workers to make sustainable decisions. These strategies are revealing opportunities of various sizes, from encouraging employees on assignment to use environmentally friendly on-the-ground mobility options to requesting staff to think about cutting back on corporate travel.

The emphasis on minimising individual carbon footprints through public transportation subsidies (in cities where transportation is well-established) and the rise in interest in mapping individual office carbon footprints to comprehend their proportional influence. Not only is the ingenuity being used promising, but also the variety of options that mobility professionals are finding.

Finding these solutions and making them work, however, would need extensive staff education. Many of these choices will eventually be made by the employee, so it's important to provide them the knowledge they need to make informed selections about the options that will have the least negative long-term effects. Additionally, it will improve employee engagement with the organization's overall efforts to achieve net-zero.

Vishal concludes “ with an environment friendly fleet management, sustainably sourced packing material, reducing carbon expenditure through our virtual surveys, we are taking few cars off the roads and saving some tress in the process. A small yet, significant step towards leaving a better planet for generations to come.

In addition to being viable, sustainable growth when done correctly may save both the company and the person money. Mobility leaders may pave the way forward with significant and doable initial steps toward incorporating climate-smart considerations into company choices involving office operations, real estate, and investments as organisations establish their sustainability point of view.