Employee commuting survey template: eleven questions, and why each one is there

This is the question set we use in production, free to copy into any survey tool. No signup, no email wall. A survey template is not where the difficulty lives: the hard parts are getting enough people to answer, proving the anonymity that makes them willing, and turning the answers into a figure someone can audit. Those parts are our product. The questions are yours.

The eleven questions

1. Which department or unit do you work in? Choices from a predefined list, plus an option to not say. Only ask this if you can group answers so every group has at least five people; otherwise drop the question entirely.
2. How many days in a normal week do you work from the workplace? Options 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 or more. This is the denominator for everything else.
3. Roughly how far is it from your home to the workplace, one way? Bands: under 2 km, 2 to 5, 5 to 10, 10 to 20, 20 to 40, over 40 km. Bands rather than exact distance: exact home distance is close to an address, and you do not need it.
4. How do you most often travel to work? Car alone, car with others, public transport, bicycle or e-bike, walking, e-scooter, or it varies.
5. Distribute a typical office week: how many days do you use each mode? A matrix over five modes: car alone, carpooling, public transport, bicycle, walking, each 0 to 5, validated so the sum does not exceed the office days from question 2. This question, times question 3, is your modal split in kilometres.
6. Do you travel differently in winter? No, or yes with more car, more public transport, or other. Seasonality is real and one question captures it.
7. Does your household have a car you can use for the commute? Own, shared, or no. Separates will not from cannot.
8. Do you usually park at the workplace? Free, paid, no, or not relevant. Parking pressure is often the most actionable finding.
9. What is the biggest reason you do not travel green, or do so more often? Travel time, drop-offs and pickups, poor public transport, weather and season, need the car for work, health, already green, or other. One answer: forcing a choice ranks the barriers.
10. What could get you to leave the car at home more often? Up to two choices: carpooling with colleagues, better public transport or tickets, a bike or e-bike scheme, a reward per green trip, a guaranteed ride home, flexible office days, or nothing, the car is necessary. This is the demand side of your action plan.
11. Optional: roughly how many self-certified absence days did you have in the last 12 months? Bands 0, 1 to 2, 3 to 5, 6 or more, plus a decline option, and only ever used in aggregate. If you cannot guarantee aggregation, drop the question. One addition where the national factors need it: where emissions are calculated per fuel type, or a national report wants kilometres split per fuel, add a twelfth question about what fuel the car you most often commute with runs on. Our Swedish and Dutch surveys carry it; the Norwegian one does not need it.

The rules that make the answers worth having

The questions are the easy half. These rules are what make people answer honestly, and they are design properties, not policies:

• Anonymous by construction: store no name, no email, no IP address and no timestamp with an answer. If your tool cannot guarantee that, the promise in your invitation is not true.
• Never show or export any group smaller than five, and suppress combinations that would single anyone out.
• The response rate carries the result. A modal split from 22 percent of employees is a guess with decimals. Decide before you start what rate you need, and extend the window rather than accept a number you cannot defend.
• Measure again with the same questions and the same method, or the change you report is a change of method.

From answers to a Scope 3 category 7 figure

Questions 3 and 5 are the calculation: distance band midpoints times mode days times commuting frequency gives person kilometres per mode, and national emission factors do the rest. The distance based method, and when the category applies at all, is covered here:

Scope 3 category 7, calculated