Responsible Business

It’s time to review your business travel policies

Many things have changed throughout the pandemic and possibly the biggest change is to working patterns. Permanent home-working or hybrid seem to be here to stay, which generates major changes to business travel.

Companies must think innovatively about how their people travel and if the mobility policies they had pre-pandemic are going to work in a post-pandemic world.

Employees are commuting less, and business journeys may now involve more use of personal cars.

We know from research and experience that many privately owned cars are older, more polluting models which will fall foul of the growing number of low emission zones being created around the country. This will be of concern to companies for a number of reasons:

• Allowing employees to use their own cars and reclaim mileage allowances, known as “grey fleet,” is costly, at a time when businesses are working hard to recover.

• Businesses are increasingly being pressed to reduce CO2 emissions and staff-use of older cars may conflict with corporate targets and ambitions.

These issues are leading many corporates to take a closer look at their approach to business travel policies, and to set controls in place that ensure employee choices actively contribute to safer travel and a greener environment.

Enterprise Car Club is a key part of the travel policy of many businesses. Employees have access to modern, low emission vehicles and employers can choose how to structure the service to meet their needs. The vehicles can be based at a company’s premises for exclusive use, a dedicated service, or employees can access Enterprise’s nationwide car club fleet. In Liverpool, we have a number of vehicles around the city and work closely with the council who use this service.

Booking and access to vehicles via an app makes the process simple and convenient and means businesses only pay when a vehicle is needed.

We know that business travel will be vital to driving our recovery, while at the same time transport and travel will be under the spotlight as the government presses ahead with its decarbonisation policy.

The good news is that innovation is ensuring the number of sustainable, low and zeroemission travel options are increasing.

To find out more about the Enterprise Car Club please contact Kate Jones on

kate.l.jones@ehi.com

Making a social impact

in crisis…and beyond

By Lesley Beattie, director of development at Everton in the Community.

The pandemic has caused a lot of disruption to organisations during the last two years and continues to have an impact as restrictions change and the virus remains very much part of our lives.

As a result of many businesses tightening their purse strings and pulling back on CSR activities, the charity sector has suffered majorly during the last 18 months.

Within days of the first lockdown being announced back in March 2020, Everton in the Community had launched its Blue Family initiative, designed to support some of society’s most vulnerable as they battled anxiety, isolation and financial crisis.

So far, Blue Family has reached more than 31,500 families and individuals, offering much-needed help in the way of food parcels and access to mental health support, as well as handing out laptops and other educational resources across the region.

This vital work, which we have since pledged to pursue for as long as is needed post pandemic, would not have been possible without robust relationships with our corporate partners.

We are continuing to work shoulder to shoulder on this journey with our corporate partners, building a future with those who played an integral role in initiatives like Blue Family.

Making an impact, for us, is why we exist – we see the need and we act. It is with the help of our corporate partners that allow us to succeed in this mission.

To create long-lasting partnerships we need to align perfectly with those businesses, focusing on our core values: ambition, determination, authenticity and family. When approached by would-be partners, our first step is to ensure that they are a good fit for us. It is 100 per cent a two-way street – that way, our stakeholders know how we intend to do business and can work better alongside us to maximise a project’s outcomes.

Similarly, discussions on the benefits to our partners will be mapped out clearly from the outset – a win-win scenario.

We cannot forget that the desire to help is there.

By listening and responding to the needs of both the people and businesses in our communities, we can address the issues head-on and whilst we are still living with the coronavirus emergency there is most definitely emerging opportunities for greater corporate-charity resilience.