Staff travel survey questions: What should you ask employees about their commute?

A staff travel survey can tell you much more than how many employees drive, cycle or use public transport.

Designed well, it can help an organisation understand:

• How and when employees commute.

• How hybrid working affects travel patterns.

• The emissions associated with commuting and homeworking.

• Where realistic alternatives may exist.

• Which practical constraints affect people’s journeys.

• Where workplace travel interventions should be focused.

Designed poorly, it may produce an interesting mode-share chart but little evidence about what to do next.

The objective should not be to ask every employee everything that might possibly be relevant. It should be to collect the minimum information needed to produce useful analysis and support the decisions the organisation needs to make.

Start with the information you need to produce

Before writing the questions, decide what you want the completed survey to tell you.

Are you trying to:

• Calculate employee commuting emissions?

• Update a workplace travel plan?

• Understand parking demand?

• Identify realistic alternative journeys?

• Compare different worksites?

• Explore car-sharing opportunities?

• Plan investment in workplace facilities?

• Target future travel support?

• Evaluate an existing initiative?

This matters because collecting data and producing useful information are not the same thing.

For example, asking how employees currently travel may produce a mode-share chart. It will not necessarily tell you whether public transport is available at the times they work, where cycling could be realistic or which employees might be able to share a journey.

Design the survey backwards from the information, comparisons and decisions you need to produce afterwards.

Keep the core survey as short as possible

Survey length should be treated as a design constraint from the beginning.

Every additional question asks more of the employee and creates another opportunity for them to abandon the survey. Questions that feel irrelevant can be especially damaging.

A long series of questions about walking, cycling or public transport may make some employees feel that the survey is not intended for them. This can contribute to a self-selecting sample in which people already interested in sustainable travel are more likely to respond.

Single-occupancy car drivers can sometimes be among the least inclined to participate, particularly if they believe the purpose is to criticise their current journey or persuade them to stop driving. Yet their responses are often essential to understanding parking demand, commuting emissions and realistic opportunities for change.

A short, mode-neutral survey is more likely to feel relevant to the whole workforce.

Before adding a question, ask:

• Is the answer needed for the main analysis?

• Will it affect a decision?

• Does the organisation already hold the information?

• Could it be calculated from other data?

• Is it relevant to everyone?

• Could it be asked later of a more appropriate group?

If the answer will not be used, the question probably should not be included.

What should the core survey ask?

The exact questions will depend on the purpose of the exercise, but a useful core survey will normally need to cover the following areas.

Worksite and journey origin

Identify the worksite associated with the employee’s commute and collect an appropriate journey origin, such as a home postcode.

This can support journey calculations, geographic analysis, car-sharing analysis and comparisons between worksites.

Collect only the level of location detail needed, and explain clearly why it is required, how it will be used and how long it will be retained.

Workplace attendance and homeworking

Ask which days the employee normally attends the workplace and which days they work from home.

Avoid assuming that everyone commutes five days a week. Someone who drives once a week should not be treated in the same way as someone making the same journey every weekday.

Day-specific information can also help identify when workplace attendance and parking demand are highest.

Working times and patterns

Normal start and finish times can determine whether an alternative journey is practical.

This is particularly important for organisations with shift workers, early starts, late finishes or variable working patterns. A bus journey that works for a 9am start may not work for someone beginning at 6am.

The survey should therefore allow employees to indicate where their schedule varies.

Current travel

Ask how the employee currently travels on the days they attend the workplace.

Where possible, avoid forcing everyone to choose one overall “usual mode”. An employee might drive on two days, cycle on another and use public transport on a fourth.

The survey may also need to recognise journeys that involve more than one mode, such as driving to a station and continuing by train.

Relevant vehicle or fare information

Where an employee drives, suitable vehicle information will help calculate the cost and emissions of the journey more accurately.

Where public transport costs are being compared, a relevant discount card, pass or entitlement may affect the fare.

These questions should appear only where they are relevant and where the information will actually be used.

Practical constraints

Some employees need a vehicle during the working day. Caring responsibilities may also affect when, where and how they travel.

These factors can make an alternative journey technically available but impractical, or less appropriate in reality.

Questions should remain neutral and avoid requesting unnecessary personal detail. The objective is to understand a constraint affecting the commute, not to ask employees to justify their circumstances.

Homeworking information

Where homeworking emissions form part of the analysis, collect only the information needed for the methodology being used.

Explain why these questions are included, as employees may not immediately associate household energy use with a commute survey.

Contact details, where there is a clear reason

There may be a legitimate reason to request contact details, such as sending a personal commute plan, providing a voucher, administering a prize draw or responding to a request for travel support.

The purpose should be explained clearly.

Receiving a survey result or entering a prize draw should not automatically mean that the employee has agreed to ongoing communications. Any optional follow-up should be presented separately, with a clear choice to opt in or out.

Where you can, calculate rather than ask

Employees may find it difficult to estimate:

• Commute distances.

• Annual driving costs.

• Public transport fares.

• Alternative journey times and costs

Where suitable data and tools are available, it may be better to collect the factual inputs and calculate these results consistently.

This can:

• Shorten the survey.

• Reduce the burden on employees.

• Avoid estimates and guesses.

• Improve consistency across respondents.

• Make comparisons between modes and worksites easier.

• Support useful outputs for individual employees.

However, there is a trade-off.

The less information you ask employees to provide directly, the more processing may be needed afterwards to turn the responses into useful information.

Calculating journeys, emissions, costs and viable alternatives may require:

• External datasets.

• Journey-planning tools.

• Emissions factors.

• Defined assumptions and methodologies.

• Data cleaning and validation.

• Spreadsheet analysis.

• Specialist software.

• Transport-planning or consultancy support.

If the work is being completed manually, this should be considered when planning the time, skills and budget required.

The survey should therefore be designed alongside the analysis process. Do not collect data without knowing how it will be processed, but equally, do not ask employees to perform calculations that can be completed more consistently elsewhere.

The format of the questions also matters. Structured answers, such as predefined worksites, days and travel modes, are generally easier to analyse than large volumes of free text.

Ask detailed questions only where they are relevant

The core survey does not need to explore every possible barrier or intervention with the entire workforce.

Instead, the initial data can be used to identify suitable groups for targeted follow-up.

For example:

• Employees within a realistic cycling distance could be asked about access to a bike, route confidence and workplace facilities.

• Employees with a potentially practical public transport journey could be asked about reliability, fares or interchange concerns.

• Employees travelling from similar locations at similar times could be asked about interest in car sharing.

• Employees who use workplace parking could be asked about permits, availability or proposed policy changes.

• Employees affected by a workplace relocation could be asked more detailed questions about the new site.

This keeps the initial survey short while allowing the organisation to investigate specific opportunities in more depth.

It also avoids asking irrelevant questions. Someone living a considerable distance from the workplace does not need to work through a detailed series of questions about cycling to work.

The principle is simple:

Use the core survey to understand the workforce and identify realistic groups. Then ask more detailed questions of the people whose answers can inform a practical intervention.

Give employees a reason to participate

A survey should create value for the organisation, but it should also offer something to the employees completing it.

That could be directly related to their commute, such as:

• A personal commute plan.

• A comparison of journey time, cost and emissions.

• Information about relevant travel options.

• Details of workplace travel support.

Alternatively, participation could be encouraged through:

• A voucher.

• Entry into a prize draw.

• A larger prize for one or more participants.

• A workplace or team reward.

• A charitable donation linked to participation.

Whatever is offered, explain it clearly and be transparent about whether contact details are required.

Employees should understand why the survey is being conducted, how their information will be used and what they will receive in return.

Turn the data into information

Completing the survey is only the beginning.

Once responses have been collected, they need to be checked, processed and combined with the relevant methodologies and external information.

The organisation may then need to:

• Calculate commuting and homeworking emissions.

• Compare results between worksites and working days.

• Map geographic patterns.

• Identify viable alternative journeys.

• Understand parking demand.

• Recognise practical constraints.

• Identify suitable groups for follow-up.

• Prioritise interventions.

• Measure future change.

This processing stage should influence the original survey design.

Every question should have a clear route from:

A response, to analysis, to information, and then a decision.

If the organisation cannot explain how an answer will be processed or used, it should reconsider whether the question needs to be asked.

A good staff travel survey is therefore not the one that collects the most data.

It is the shortest survey that can produce the information needed to make better workplace travel decisions.

The aim is to ask less, process it well and make the answers useful.