CWT Creates Responsible Travel Consulting Framework

CWT has created a new responsible travel consulting framework to help companies look beyond compliance and cost management, and build more balanced travel programs that also align with other important objectives.

The ECO framework – short for Employee Wellbeing, Climate Impact and Organizational Performance – is designed to help organizations create travel programs that engage and motivate their workforce, reduce their environmental impact, and manage costs more effectively.

“With our new ECO framework, we’re layering employee wellbeing and environmental considerations onto our suite of consulting services which have traditionally focused on objectives like increasing compliance and lowering costs,” Richard Johnson, Senior Director, CWT Solutions Group. “Our aim is to help companies find the sweet spot between these different and sometimes conflicting priorities in their travel programs – and we’re providing them with a roadmap to get there.”

In addition to developing proprietary tools to assess and improve the performance of travel programs with respect to employee well-being and environmental impact, CWT Solutions Group has partnered with Atmosfair, an independent non-profit organization specialized in making business travel greener, on a highly accurate and granular methodology to calculate CO2 emissions.

The ECO framework covers five areas:

Strategic Assessment: Understanding the current status of the company’s travel program and its organizational objectives. This is followed by setting goals and targets, and defining a strategy to achieve them.

Travel Policy Review: Aligning the company’s travel policy to its responsible travel goals. CWT Solutions Group has created a tool that lets an organization assess how its travel policy lines up with the three ECO pillars, as well as benchmark it against other companies’ travel policies.

Supplier Sourcing & Management: Incorporating responsible travel criteria into the request for proposal (RFP) process across all travel categories, and conducting ongoing contract reviews with suppliers.

Change Management: Bringing stakeholders across the organization on-board with changes to the travel program through targeted communications, education sessions and workshops.

Reporting & Insights: Defining key performance indicators (KPIs) for the travel program, and providing data, insights and reporting on these metrics. This includes benchmarking performance against industry peers and using predictive analysis to forecast outcomes.

Having piloted the ECO framework with a small group of clients and received extremely positive feedback, CWT Solutions Group is embedding this approach into its global consulting offer.

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