Employee Transportation in ESG Reporting - Unrealized Potential

Employee mobility policies are an often overlooked yet highly influential aspect of corporate environmental and social impact. Workplace transportation policies, whether explicit or implicit, shape how employees commute by influencing factors such as parking availability, company car benefits, commuting reimbursements, flexible working hours, and workplace location. These policies significantly affect travel behavior, including the number of trips employees make, the timing of travel, and the transportation modes they choose.

Despite their importance, current ESG reporting frameworks provide only limited attention to employee transportation. Major reporting standards such as the GHG Protocol, GRI, and the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) treat commuting and many business trips as indirect emissions under Scope 3, which receives far less rigorous reporting requirements than direct organizational emissions (Scopes 1 and 2). This approach creates several distortions: companies may underreport commuting emissions, responsibility for business travel may depend arbitrarily on vehicle ownership, and the substantial influence employers have over commuting behavior, through policies such as free parking, is largely ignored. Moreover, environmental reporting frameworks focus primarily on greenhouse gas emissions while overlooking other negative externalities associated with car-dependent mobility, including congestion, noise pollution, land use impacts, and road accidents.

From a social perspective, ESG frameworks similarly fail to address the broader role employers play in shaping equitable access to employment. Current reporting requirements focus mainly on workplace transportation injuries, without considering how employer mobility policies affect the accessibility of jobs for individuals without access to private vehicles or for disadvantaged populations. This omission is particularly striking given that ESG frameworks, including the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), emphasize equal opportunity, diversity, and inclusion.

The article argues that ESG reporting frameworks should expand their treatment of employee transportation. Companies should be encouraged to take greater responsibility for the mobility patterns they help create by promoting walking, cycling, and public transportation while reducing reliance on private cars. More comprehensive reporting requirements could also encourage companies to cooperate with public policy efforts, such as congestion pricing—and to actively work with local authorities and stakeholders to reduce the environmental and social externalities associated with employee commuting.

Strengthening corporate responsibility for employee transportation would allow ESG reporting frameworks to better capture a significant source of environmental and social impact and could serve as a meaningful tool for advancing more sustainable and equitable mobility systems.

To read the full article, visit our website in Hebrew.