Sustainable Global Mobility – Myth or Truth?

Sustainability is becoming more important to both organizations and individuals, and mobility programs' environmental credentials are now being scrutinized more closely. However, research revealed that just 3% of global mobility (GM) teams think they have succeeded in attaining sustainability. Given that mobility is in the business of transporting people across the globe, this is not unexpected. However, there are methods to reduce or eliminate the environmental effect of global mobility at each level of the assignment process, whether via the decisions made by the company or the assignees themselves.

Do all of your assignees genuinely need to travel on an assignment in person? is the first thing to think about. One strategy to lessen the carbon footprint of your GM programme is to facilitate virtual assignments; just under half of organisations either now encourage this option or aim to do so explicitly to make the programme more sustainable. However, not all assignments can be completed remotely, and those that can still have a significant carbon footprint if assignees need to see their coworkers frequently.

The environmental effect of air travel to and from assignment sites is a key area of concern when virtual assignments are not feasible, however there are several ways for those wishing to lessen or alleviate the environmental impact. Sometimes it is possible to avoid taking a flight while travelling abroad; on some routes, assignees may be able to take the train, and virtual look-see trips for potential assignees are more frequent. Even so, it's probable that some air travel will be unavoidable. In that scenario, businesses may invest in comparable emission reductions elsewhere to make up for the carbon emissions. As business class seats have a larger carbon footprint per seat than those in economy class, discouraging their usage will also be beneficial.

Similarly, the transportation of assignees' things can have a significant carbon burden. Every time an assignee moves to another nation, they must bring certain belongings with them. What businesses may do is try to strike a balance between the demands of the assignee and their family and the finest environmental practices.

Giving the assignee the freedom to choose the right combination of air freight, surface freight, and excess baggage while also promoting sustainable choices by making alternatives when they are available is one method to do this. For instance, it is seldom necessary to send furniture. Instead, businesses might provide assignees with a cash allowance and encourage them to rent furnishings for the duration of the assignment, or with a housing budget big enough to rent furnished lodgings.

A monetary allowance might also be used to buy furniture locally, which might be more environmentally friendly than shipping it, however buying new things obviously has an impact on the environment. However, there are methods to minimise this. Assignees can be encouraged to buy from businesses that use sustainable techniques and local materials, or even to think about high-quality used furniture. It's important to keep in mind that furnishing costs and alternatives might vary greatly from place to place. For instance, there are very few furnished apartments in Zimbabwe and no furniture rental businesses, so the only option except shipping furniture there is to buy it. In the meanwhile, the price of furnished housing might be the same as that of unfurnished in certain nations, but 50% higher in others.

While moving may have a significant negative impact on the environment, employers and assignees can try to make more environmentally friendly travel decisions during the assignment itself. A fantastic, more eco-friendly substitute for giving your assignees a car is to provide them a public transportation allowance. However, a lot will rely on the assignment's location. For instance, many American cities do not have good public transportation options, despite the fact that using public transportation is often far more convenient than driving in Hong Kong.

Another choice is to provide assignees access to electric vehicles. In addition to being more environmentally friendly than gasoline and diesel vehicles, electric cars also have lower long-term operating costs than standard vehicles. Many nations also provide incentives, such as subsidies and preferential tax treatment, to encourage the purchase of electric vehicles. The practicality of this alternative, however, will once again rely on the locations of your assignees as well as a number of other elements, including the usual travel distance, the car's range between charges, and the domestic charging infrastructure, including whether you can charge it at home. If the housing offered to assignees is extremely close to the workplace and close to the school of any accompanying children, it could even be feasible to bypass the need for automobiles or public transportation completely. Areas close to crowded schools or city centres, however, are probably more expensive.

You may think about making sure to provide your assignees more recently constructed residences, which often have far better insulation than older properties and will thus help your assignees use less heating and cooling. One of the fundamental principles of sustainability is reducing energy usage. If you cover your assignees' utility expenses, this might promote unnecessary energy use. Because of this, you might want to think about substituting the utilities benefit with an allowance based on normal expenses, or including utilities in the cost-of-living basket as a substitute when evaluating a well-insulated structure.

Benefits policies with more flexibility are becoming more and more common. Nearly 1 in 4 businesses were contemplating adopting this strategy for ongoing assignment benefits. Even more frequently, 2 in 5 employers say they take a flexible approach to relocation benefits, and another 1 in 5 say they're thinking about doing so. The majority of businesses using this strategy provide assignees a predetermined lump payment that they may use as needed, and the remaining funds are divided equally between a core & flex strategy and a controlled lump sum strategy.

Clients are understandably expecting more and more from their providers to support their environmental objectives. Currently, one-third of organisations take sustainability into account when selecting GM providers, and this number is expected to rise in the future. At Interem, we are dedicated to continuously minimising our environmental effect and lowering our carbon footprint. We have been offsetting our business travel-related carbon emissions for a few years now. In order to supplement our training programme for mobility experts, we have established an online course on global mobility as part of our efforts to increase our sustainable digital output. This not only offers a practical substitute for in-person training with the most flexibility and accessibility, but also reduces travel-related emissions.

While many businesses are unsure of where to begin or if it is even possible to be sustainable when international relocation is crucial to the operation of the company, the majority of businesses are, at best, in the very early stages of integrating sustainable options and practises into GM programmes. Most people value sustainability already, so when organisations prioritise these goals and provide education and assistance to assignees, assignees are more likely to make eco-friendly decisions and feel good about helping to lessen the organization's environmental impact.