This toolkit offers useful ideas and suggestions on how to reduce the need to travel to work by allowing remote working and flexible working hours.
Why reduce the need to travel to work?
Many employers now offer the opportunity for employees to work from home, hold meetings by telephone or video conferencing, or work a condensed week. Reducing the need to travel to work can benefit the employer by:
- Reducing required workspace by having more staff working from home or at work hubs
- Increasing staff morale by allowing flexible options for staff with difficult or stressful journeys and facilitating a work-life balance that suits the employee
- Being seen as a considerate employer which could benefit staff retention
- Increasing the safety of staff by avoiding having to travel in bad weather conditions
Work Hubs
Many people in Devon face a long commute every day. By encouraging employees to work from a local work hub you can cut your carbon footprint and save your company money.
Devon Work Hubs offer local workspaces that provide the opportunity to travel shorter distances, along with the freedom to arrange meetings and days in an office environment without the long commute.
Workers can find their local work hub and take advantage of the hot desks available. Visit the Devon Work Hub website for more information.
Working from Home
Benefits for employers
A 2025 study by King’s College London listed the following benefits of working from home for employers:
- Higher productivity: Employees working remotely were 10.5% more productive after the transition to home working.
- Improved service performance: Productivity gains were driven by shorter call durations, with employees benefiting from quieter home environments.
- Access to a wider talent pool: Remote working enabled the company to recruit from a broader geographic area, including rural locations.
- Greater workforce diversity: The firm attracted more women and other underrepresented groups, increasing the potential recruitment pool.
- Higher-quality recruitment: The company was able to attract more educated and experienced employees through remote working arrangements.
- Potential for lower staff turnover: The study suggests that combining remote working with effective initial in-person onboarding can support stronger performance and retention
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development included similar findings in their 2022 update on flexible and hybrid working practices.
Benefits for the ennvironment
Allowing staff to work from home and so reducing the need for travel, also beneficial to the environment if they have a long commute by car to work. This can contribute to meeting company targets for lowering emissions related to travel.
Flexible Working Hours
Allowing flexible working hours can allow people to carshare more flexibly or take public transport.
A flexible–hours scheme usually involves working a set of “core hours” – perhaps 10am until 4pm, with the ability to vary the hours either side of this.
It might also be a good idea to allow staff to build up hours one week in order to work less another week, if this works for the company. This will allow employees to work more flexibly based on their personal lives, while allowing them to still work full hours.
You can find out more about various options for flexible working hours on the National Government website.
Compressed Working Week
An increasingly popular option is the ‘compressed working week’ where staff condense their working week or fortnight by working longer days.
For example:
- 4-and-a-half-day week – Half a days’ worth of additional hours, are worked up during the week, allowing for a half day to be worked on the Friday
- 4-day week – All hours are worked in four days instead of the usual five, normally spreading out the usual hours equally over the four working days
- 9-Day fortnight – Staff work two weeks’ worth of hours over nine days instead of the usual ten. The hours from the day taken off, are then split between hours worked during the first and second week.
These arrangements can be offered as permanent working hours for staff who may regularly need a shorter day each week or can be offered as and when a member of staff needs it.