Running a travel survey is a good way of finding out how staff currently travel to work, and what barriers are stopping your staff from travelling sustainably and actively. It is also a good way of gaining evidence to support the introduction of measures that can enable staff to make smarter travel choices.
What questions do I ask?
You can use our Travel survey template which contains a list of tried and tested questions to help you get helpful insights from your staff.
Getting the information you need and making sure the survey is not getting too long, is always a balancing act. Consider the below when adding additional questions to the survey:
- If your business has multiple sites, consider asking which site people travel to most often or which site they are based at. This way you might be able to get information about differences in travel patterns, concerns and motivations for different sites.
- If you want to use the survey to highlight certain support offers consider asking if people are aware of certain incentives or policies you offer: e.g. Have you used our Cycle to Work scheme? Are you aware of our Emergency Ride Home policy?
- Consider asking people if they would be interested in supporting others in giving a different mode of transport a go e.g. being a walking/ cycling buddy, sharing their travel experience, training as a walk/ cycle leader, or be an office travel champion etc.
- Consider mentioning local support offers e.g.:
- Consider whether there are any other topics you want to ask about in the same timeframe: consider combining these questions with the travel survey to avoid survey fatigue but ensure the survey doesn’t get too long.
- Ensure you comply with UK data protection regulations. For more information, visit the Government’s UK data protection legislation webpage.
When to do a travel survey?
As your business and staff is likely to change over time, we recommend that a travel survey is conducted every year. We also recommend that you complete the travel survey at the same time of year to ensure you are collecting comparable travel data. From our experience, September is a good time to conduct a travel survey.
Circulating the survey to staff
There are many ways to circulate and promote the survey to staff:
- Send round an initial email to staff which contains a link to the survey, an explanation of why they should do the survey, and its importance to the business. We have provided an email template below.
- Sending your email out by or on behalf of senior management might help you increase staff engagement.
- Have line managers mention the survey in team meetings and ask them to emphasise the importance of filling out the survey.
- Put up posters on noticeboards/in reception/in toilets.
- Consider offering a prize draw to encourage participation, with a winner selected at random from survey respondents.
- Send out a reminder email a week before the survey deadline.
Download our Travel survey email template.