CASE STUDIES
Pawprint
Pawprint is a climate action platform designed to help businesses realise the strategic advantages of sustainability through data-driven insights and employee engagement.
Pawprint became signatories to the Pledge in late 2021.
This case study focuses particularly on Pawprint's employee benefits scheme, designed to incentivise carbon footprint reduction, for example a Slow Travel Days policy to help employees avoid flights when going on holiday.
What did we do and what has been the carbon impact?
We talk a lot about climate action at Pawprint, which means we have to walk the walk too. One way we do this is through our employee benefits, which we’ve designed to incentivise carbon footprint reduction. Slow Travel Days exist to help employees avoid flights when going on holiday. If employees travel outside of the UK by train, bus, ferry, bike, or (a full/electric) car, they get an extra day of annual leave for each leg (up to 2 days). To set this benefit up, we partnered with Climate Perks.
What are the key lessons you've taken from the process?
● Leadership support - our CEO was completely behind this approach and regularly travels abroad with a slow travel approach, leading the way.
● Trust and be flexible - booking holidays can take a lot of planning. Let your employees book the slow travel days in advance, and show you proof down the line in later 121s if need be.
● Have employees share their story - 20% of our employees have booked their slow travel days for this year so far. We’ve had individuals travel to Europe by ferry, train and even bicycle. All of these stories have been shared internally to create a culture buzz and help others understand what they could do. As an additional bonus we’ve also learnt that sharing it externally (on LinkedIn) has created a buzz also!
● Offer additional days for slower modes of transport - for those who opt for even slower modes of transport (eg. travelling by bicycle) which has an even larger carbon saving yet may take longer, why not reward them with a few more days?
Would you recommend this to others?
Yes – this would work for all organisations, small or large. It will be a lot easier to manage in slightly smaller organisations with good levels of trust amongst their culture as well as shorter processes. Within larger organisations it may be that you look to introduce a stricter process to ensure slow travel is being met by those that do book it off.
We’ve since received great feedback from our employees and understand that it is a great talent recruitment and retainment benefit to have in our employee benefit package.
Megan Cleary
Customer Success Executive, Pawprint
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