How to measure emissions from Employee commuting: Road

What counts as Employee commuting: Road

Employee commuting road is road travel between an employee's home and their usual worksite, in vehicles not owned or operated by the organisation — personal cars, buses, coaches and taxis. It excludes trips made for a specific business purpose, which are reported under business travel road instead, and excludes days worked from home, which fall under home working. As a Scope 3 Category 7 source, it's estimated rather than metered, typically via employee surveys.

Employee commuting is the most survey-dependent category in this guide, since the organisation has no direct visibility into how staff travel to work — unlike owned assets or metered utilities. The clearest boundary to hold onto is against business travel road and home working: commuting is the regular home-to-worksite journey, business travel is a trip for a specific purpose, and home working is time spent not commuting at all. A common double-counting risk is including days an employee worked from home in the commuting total — exclude those days, or your commuting figure will be inflated relative to actual travel patterns. As a reporting tip, run commuting surveys at a consistent time of year and ask about typical mode and distance, rather than one-off travel logs, to get a more representative annual estimate.

What activity data you need

Collect the most specific physical unit available. Unit definitions are in Appendix I — Description of Units.

• passenger.km
• km
• £ Spend
• $ Spend

Which emission scope it falls under

Employee commuting: Road activity data typically maps to Scope 3 Category 7 under the GHG Protocol. Confirm organisational boundary and ownership before reporting.

Sub-types available in the platform

All 15 sub-types available in the platform.

• Black taxi
• Bus: Average
• Car or vehicle: Not owned by organisation
• Car or vehicle: Owned by organisation
• Coach
• Hybrid taxi
• Land travel: Average: UK
• Local bus
• London bus
• Mini bus: 9 seat: Average
• Motorbike: Not owned by organisation
• Motorbike: Owned by organisation
• Regular taxi
• Road Travel: Average
• Van: not owned by business: Van Class I (up to 1.305 tonnes)

Data entry options

• vehicle type

  Select vehicle type when entering employee commuting: road activity data in the platform.

• fuel type

  Select fuel type when entering employee commuting: road activity data in the platform.

Full list of data entry options

Common questions

How do I collect commuting data if I can't survey every employee?

A representative sample survey, grossed up to headcount, is an accepted approach when a full census isn't practical — just document the sampling method and response rate.

Should days an employee worked from home be included in commuting distance?

No, exclude work-from-home days from the commuting calculation — those days are captured separately under home working, not employee commuting.

How do I handle employees who commute by a mix of modes, like drive-then-train?

Ask for the distance covered by each mode in the survey, and record each leg under its relevant mode rather than assigning the whole journey to one mode.

Does commuting data need to be collected every year, or can I reuse last year's survey?

Commuting patterns can shift meaningfully year to year, particularly with hybrid working, so refreshing the survey annually, or at least checking headcount and hybrid policy changes, keeps the estimate credible.

What if an employee occasionally commutes to a different site than usual?

Ask survey respondents to report their typical or most frequent commute; occasional travel to an alternative site can usually be treated as immaterial unless it's a regular pattern for a significant group of staff.