Blum - Moving Ideas for Sustainability

60 Kapitel Management approaches Mobility Blum offers employees incentives to switch to an environmentally-friendly alternative for their commute. If you were to orbit the earth three and a half times, that would be the same total distance travelled each day by our employees at Blum Austria – around 140,000 kilometres. As part of our sustainability commitment, we at Blum are asking ourselves how we can persuade our employees to opt for a greener alternative to driving. To do this, we have thoroughly analysed our employees’ situation when it comes to travelling sustainably, looking at factors like how many employees live within cycling distance or have access to a bus or train route. This way, we can identify the areas with the greatest potential for improvement, which gives us a good starting point. An acces- sibility analysis by the Vorarlberg Energy Institute demonstrated that 60 % of our employees meet these criteria. On average, 38 % currently use an environmentally-friendly means of commuting, which equates to 2500 of the 7000 employees in Austria. Blum has put together a 20-strong team from different departments with the task of developing a mobility concept combining a series of interlink- ing measures. The idea is to offer employees a basic package for each mode of transport in order to encourage them to travel to their workplace sustainably. For example, this may comprise financial support with the purchase of a high-quality bicycle or an annual ticket for public transport. These basic packages are integrated into a reward system that then incen- tives employees to actually take advantage of them for their daily commute to work. This “Ecopoints” system will be presented in the next article. As part of the Jobrad campaign, employees can buy a bicycle or e-bike from selected partners at an affordable price, as well as benefiting from national subsidies. Anyone who commutes to work by public transport or bike on at least four days of the week, and does not use the company car park, also receives a subsidy from the company. This makes cycling even more Travelling to work by bus or bike Blum is serious about mobility and therefore established the post of Mobility Officer in 2019. The Mobility Officer is supported by a project team from various departments, who work together with her to develop, monitor and improve our mobility concept. In addition to surveying what’s happening now, the team develops realistic goals for climate-friendly employee mobility. Their tasks also include evaluating the effectiveness of the measures currently in place. For example, the mobility concept is continuously reviewed by means of monthly vehicle counts and additional ad hoc samples. This allows us to assess whether our strategy for environmentally-friendly mobility is really working. appealing. Alternatively, employees can significantly reduce their ecological footprint by travelling to work by public transport. In return, Blum will cover the costs of a “VMOBIL maximo” climate ticket, which is valid throughout the entire federal state of Vorarlberg. With the Vorarlberg family pass, the whole family can even travel by bus and train for free. In addition, the sites themselves will be upgraded to accommodate the additional influx of cyclists, with more bike racks and bigger changing rooms and showers, as well as measures to raise awareness. This internal initiative is also being supplemented through collaboration with external partners and local policies to promote the expansion of the cycle and public transport networks. Both the bicycles and public transport tickets can – and should – also be used by employees privately, in order to encourage sustainable travel out- side of the work context, too. And we aren’t the only advocates for these ideas: our mobility concept even won the overall prize at the Verkehrsclub Österreich’s 2022 Mobility Awards, the slogan of which roughly translates as “Let’s turn transport around”.