How to run a staff travel survey that actually leads to action
- David Smith
- Jul 6
- 7 min read
A staff travel survey should be more than a data collection exercise
Many organisations run staff travel surveys.
They might use Microsoft Forms, SurveyMonkey, SmartSurvey, Google Forms or an internal HR survey tool. These approaches can be useful. They are familiar, relatively quick to set up, and can help collect basic information about how employees travel to work.
But collecting travel data is only the first step.
The real value comes from what happens next.
A good staff travel survey should help an organisation understand:
how staff currently commute
what the main travel patterns are
where parking or access pressures may exist
how commuting contributes to emissions
what realistic alternatives may be available
where follow-up activity should be focused
what practical action the organisation should take
That is the difference between a survey that produces a spreadsheet and a survey that supports better workplace travel decisions.
Start with the decision, not the question
One of the most important principles in survey design is simple:
Do not ask a question unless you know why you need the answer.
Every question should have a purpose.
If a question does not have a purpose, it probably should not be in the core survey.
When designing CalCommuter, we considered a question to have a purpose if it could do one of two things:
It improves the employee’s Personal Commute Plan output.
It improves the organisation’s analysis and decision making.
This matters because staff travel surveys are competing for people’s time and attention. Employees are often asked to complete surveys by different teams, for different reasons, throughout the year.
If a survey feels too long, too intrusive or too irrelevant, people may drop out or ignore it altogether.
A better approach is to keep the core survey focused on the information that is genuinely needed.
That means asking enough to produce useful analysis, but not so much that the survey becomes a burden.
Keep the core survey short and purposeful
The CalCommuter survey has been designed to be quick to complete.
The aim is not to ask every possible workplace travel question.
The aim is to ask the right core questions.
Those core questions are focused on the information needed to understand an employee’s current commute, calculate relevant outputs, generate their tailored commute plan, and provide useful organisational insight through the employer dashboard.
This usually includes practical information such as:
where the employee travels from
their main worksite
how they usually commute
how often they commute
whether they work from home
relevant car or van information, where applicable
car sharing information, where applicable
The survey is deliberately kept light.
That matters because a short, focused survey reduces drop-off. It also respects the employee’s time.
In practice, the easier the survey is to complete, the more likely people are to complete it.
Employees should get something back
Many staff travel surveys ask employees to provide information, but give very little back in return.
The organisation receives the data.
The employee fills in the form.
Then nothing happens from their perspective.
That can make the survey feel like another internal request that disappears into the ether.
CalCommuter takes a different approach.
Every employee who completes the survey receives a tailored commute plan.
That plan shows the cost, duration and emissions of their current commute alongside realistic alternatives where available.
This is important because it changes the exchange.
The message is not simply:
“Please complete this survey so the organisation can collect data.”
It becomes:
“Complete this short survey and receive useful information about your own commute.”
That is the built-in incentive.
Some organisations use prize draws, vouchers or other rewards to encourage survey participation. There is nothing wrong with incentives where they are appropriate.
But with CalCommuter, every participant receives something directly relevant to them: a personal commute plan based on their own commute context.
That direct value helps support response rates and engagement without relying solely on external rewards.
The survey is the entry point, not the whole value
It is sometimes useful to describe CalCommuter as a staff travel survey because that is a familiar concept.
Most organisations understand what a staff travel survey is.
It sounds practical, recognisable and relatively low-risk.
But CalCommuter is not just a survey tool.
The survey is the entry point into a wider workplace travel intelligence platform.
A standard survey tool can help collect responses. But after that, someone still has to analyse the data, calculate distances, estimate emissions, interpret results, identify opportunities and work out what to do next.
That work can quickly become manual, time-consuming and inconsistent.
CalCommuter has been designed so that the survey response immediately connects into a deeper analysis process.
The same short set of employee responses can support:
individual commute plans
commuting emissions analysis
homeworking emissions analysis
mode share reporting
worksite comparisons
geographic analysis
parking demand insight
understanding of viable alternatives
targeted follow-up activity
workplace travel planning decisions
This is why the design of the survey matters.
The questions are not just collecting answers.
They are powering the outputs that follow.
Avoid asking every employee every possible question
A common temptation with staff travel surveys is to keep adding questions.
Someone wants to ask about cycling.
Someone else wants to ask about buses.
Another team wants to ask about parking.
Another wants to ask about staff wellbeing.
Another wants to ask about homeworking.
Individually, each question may sound reasonable.
Collectively, the survey becomes too long.
It is also not always the right approach to ask every employee every question.
For example, if an employee’s commute has no realistic relationship to a particular intervention, asking a long set of detailed questions about that topic can feel irrelevant.
That does not mean the organisation should never ask deeper questions.
It means the core survey should be used to identify where deeper follow-up is most useful.
A better approach is often:
Run a short, focused core survey.
Use the results to understand patterns and opportunities.
Follow up with specific groups where deeper engagement makes sense.
That follow-up might be a targeted survey, an invitation to a focus group, a workplace travel challenge, a car sharing campaign, a public transport information session, or another intervention relevant to the people involved.
The core survey should help the organisation work out who to engage and why.
It should not try to ask every possible follow-up question to every employee at the start.
Custom questions can be useful, but they should be used carefully
Some organisations have specific questions they want to add to their CalCommuter staff travel survey.
CalCommuter can support custom questions where needed.
However, custom questions should be used carefully.
Every additional question increases the length of the survey. It may also increase complexity, reduce completion rates or make the survey feel less focused.
Before adding a custom question, it is worth asking:
Do we need to ask this of every employee?
Will the answer change what we do?
Could this be asked later as a targeted follow-up?
Is this question important enough to justify adding time to the core survey?
Sometimes the answer will be yes.
There may be a specific local issue, worksite consideration, funding requirement or organisational policy question that genuinely needs to be included.
But often, the better approach is to keep the core survey short and use the results to decide where follow-up is needed.
This helps protect the employee experience while still allowing organisations to explore specific topics in more detail.
Why a basic survey can be a missed opportunity
There is nothing wrong with using a standard survey tool to ask staff how they travel.
For some organisations, that may be a starting point.
But if an organisation is already going to spend time planning, approving, communicating and launching a staff travel survey, it is worth considering what value they want to get from the exercise.
A basic survey may tell the organisation:
how many people drive
how many people use public transport
how many people walk or cycle
how many people work from home
That information can be useful.
But it may not answer the questions that matter more:
How far are people travelling?
What are the emissions associated with those journeys?
Which worksites create the greatest commuting impact?
Where is parking demand highest?
Which employees have realistic alternatives?
What would those alternatives cost?
How long would they take?
Where should the organisation focus action?
Which follow-up activity is likely to be relevant?
Without that deeper analysis, the organisation may still be left asking:
"What should we do next?"
That is the point at which a simple survey can become a missed opportunity.
A better staff travel survey should lead to action
The purpose of a staff travel survey should not be to produce a spreadsheet.
It should be to support better decisions.
That might mean helping a sustainability team understand employee commuting emissions.
It might mean helping an estates team understand parking pressure.
It might mean helping a transport team identify where single-occupancy car travel could realistically be reduced.
It might mean helping HR provide better commute information to new starters.
It might mean helping a local authority, NHS organisation, university or regional programme understand where workplace travel support should be focused.
The value is not just in the response data.
The value is in the insight that follows.
What CalCommuter does differently
CalCommuter has been designed around a simple principle:
Staff travel data should lead to practical workplace travel decisions.
The platform starts with a short employee survey, but it does not stop there.
Employees receive a tailored commute plan showing the cost, duration and emissions of their current commute alongside realistic alternatives where available.
Employers receive evidence-based insight into commuting emissions, homeworking emissions, mode share, geographic patterns, worksite differences and opportunities for action.
The core survey is deliberately focused on the questions that are needed to generate those outputs.
Custom questions can be added where appropriate, but the priority is always to keep the survey useful, proportionate and easy to complete.
For employees, the survey provides something back: a personal commute plan for their commute context.
For employers, it turns commute data into evidence.
For project partners, it provides a practical foundation for workplace travel planning, engagement and intervention design.
That is why a staff travel survey should not be treated as a one-off form.
Done well, it becomes the starting point for understanding how staff commute today, how they could travel tomorrow, and where practical opportunities for change may exist.
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