How Do I Collect Data for Work-Related Transportation Emissions?

Employee commuting is not the same as work-related transportation

It's a mix-up that trips up almost every company new to ESG reporting: assuming employee commuting and work-related transportation are the same thing. They aren't, and the difference matters for how you collect data and where it belongs in your report.

Employee commuting covers the regular journey employees make between home and their normal workplace:

• Home to office
• Office to home
• Regular daily travel, following broadly the same route each time

Work-related transportation, by contrast, covers travel that happens during work — journeys employees take as part of doing their job, rather than getting to their job. This includes things like:

• Customer visits
• Supplier meetings
• Site inspections
• Business travel
• Conferences
• Workshops
• Training sessions
• Internal meetings at other locations
• Airport transfers
• Travel between company offices

Both categories generally sit within Scope 3 of the GHG Protocol, since they involve emissions from activities outside a company's direct operational control. But they need to be tracked separately, because the travel patterns behind them — and therefore the best way to collect data about them — are very different.

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Why work-related transportation is harder to calculate

Employee commuting is relatively predictable. Most employees travel from the same home to the same office, using the same transport method, at roughly the same distance, day after day. That consistency makes it manageable to capture with a single, once-a-year questionnaire.

Work-related transportation doesn't behave the same way. In a single month, an employee might:

• Visit several different customers, each a different distance away
• Drive different routes every week
• Use different vehicles depending on availability
• Fly occasionally for a conference or client meeting
• Take a train instead of driving
• Use a taxi at an airport or unfamiliar city
• Rent a vehicle for a specific trip
• Stay in a hotel as part of a multi-day trip
• Travel internationally for work

This variability is exactly why work-related transportation is often the messier of the two categories to collect data for. There's no single "typical journey" to describe, and asking employees to recall a year's worth of varied business trips from memory tends to produce rough, unreliable numbers. Because of this, it's worth using a slightly different approach than the one you'd use for commuting.

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Method 1: Employee questionnaire

The first practical option is to let employees report their own work-related transportation directly, similar in spirit to an employee commuting questionnaire — but focused exclusively on travel undertaken as part of work rather than the daily journey to the office.

This approach works particularly well for companies where business travel is relatively limited or occasional. In practice, once a year employees can complete a short questionnaire covering things like:

• Total kilometres driven for work purposes
• Vehicle type used
• Fuel type
• Any flights taken for work
• Train travel
• Taxi usage
• Other work-related transportation

Once this information is collected, appropriate emission factors can be applied to calculate the associated greenhouse gas emissions for each transport type.

This method is often sufficient for small and medium-sized businesses where business travel isn't a large or frequent part of daily operations — for example, a company where a handful of employees occasionally visit a client site or attend a conference, but most work happens from the office.

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Method 2: Use existing mileage or travel records

Companies with more frequent work-related transportation often already have much of the data they need sitting in existing systems — it just hasn't been used for ESG reporting yet.

Useful sources of existing data include:

• Mileage reimbursement records
• Mileage logs
• Expense systems
• Fleet management systems
• Travel management systems
• Vehicle logs
• Company credit card travel data

These sources frequently already contain the details needed for accurate reporting, such as:

• Total kilometres travelled
• Travel dates
• Which employee made the trip
• Vehicle registration numbers
• Destinations

Vehicle registration numbers, in particular, are useful because they can be used to identify the specific vehicle type, fuel type, and engine type (whether the vehicle is electric or combustion).

With this level of detail, a platform like Wardn can calculate emissions directly from the recorded travel activity, rather than from an employee's general recollection. This method is generally more accurate than a questionnaire, because it relies on actual operational records rather than estimates made after the fact.

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Which approach should you choose?

There's no single right answer for every company — the best method depends on how much your employees travel and what records you already keep.

An employee questionnaire tends to work best when:

• Business travel across the company is limited overall
• Most employees only travel occasionally for work
• There's no formal mileage tracking or expense system already in place

Mileage and travel records tend to work best when:

• Employees travel frequently as part of their role
• Mileage reimbursement is already tracked through payroll or expenses
• The company operates fleet vehicles
• Business travel makes up a meaningful share of overall operations

It's also worth noting that these methods aren't mutually exclusive. A company might use mileage records for a sales team that travels constantly, while relying on a simple questionnaire to capture occasional trips from employees in other departments. Combining both approaches where it makes sense is entirely reasonable.

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Data quality matters — but don't let perfection get in the way

As with other Scope 3 categories, it's tempting to skip work-related transportation altogether if the available data feels incomplete or messy. This is usually the wrong call. Estimating work-related transportation as reasonably as possible is generally preferable to excluding it entirely from your ESG report.

A few habits make a meaningful difference to data quality over time:

• Use actual records whenever they're available, rather than defaulting to a questionnaire out of convenience.
• Collect consistent information every reporting year, so your figures are comparable year over year.
• Document any assumptions, such as how you handled missing data for a particular employee or trip.
• Maintain an audit trail, so the source of each figure can be explained later if needed.

In practice, a consistent methodology applied every year is often more valuable to the credibility of your ESG report than chasing perfect precision on data that's inherently variable, like business travel.

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How Wardn helps with work-related transportation

Once you've decided how to collect work-related transportation data, the next challenge is turning that data into usable emissions figures without doing the calculations by hand every reporting period.

Wardn supports multiple ways of bringing this data into your ESG report, including:

• Employee questionnaires for companies with limited or occasional business travel
• Manual mileage inputs for recording specific trips or totals
• Vehicle-based calculations, using vehicle registration details to identify fuel and engine type
• Automatic emission calculations, applying the appropriate emission factors to whichever transport type was recorded
• Consistent reporting methodology, so the same approach can be reused each year
• Audit-friendly documentation, keeping a clear record of how each figure was derived

Once the underlying transportation data — whether from a questionnaire or from mileage and travel records — has been entered, Wardn automatically applies the relevant emission factors and incorporates the results into your company's ESG report. This means the heavy lifting of matching transport types to the correct emission factors happens in the background, leaving you to focus on collecting good data rather than calculating emissions manually.

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Frequently asked questions

Is work-related transportation the same as employee commuting?

No. Employee commuting covers the regular journey between an employee's home and their normal workplace. Work-related transportation covers travel that happens during work, such as customer visits, business trips, conferences, and travel between offices. Both typically fall under Scope 3, but they need to be measured separately.

Why is work-related transportation harder to measure than employee commuting?

Commuting usually follows a predictable pattern — same home, same office, similar distance every day. Work-related transportation is much more variable, since employees may drive different routes, fly occasionally, take trains or taxis, rent vehicles, or travel internationally, all within the same reporting period.

Should I use a questionnaire or mileage records to collect work-related transportation data?

It depends on how much your company travels. A questionnaire tends to work well for companies with limited or occasional business travel and no formal mileage tracking. Mileage and travel records tend to work better for companies with frequent travel, existing reimbursement systems, or fleet vehicles, since this data is usually more accurate.

Can vehicle registration numbers help calculate transportation emissions?

Yes. If mileage or travel records include vehicle registration numbers, this information can be used to identify the vehicle type, fuel type, and engine type, allowing emissions to be calculated directly from actual vehicle data rather than general assumptions.

What should I do if I don't have complete work-related transportation data?

Estimating as reasonably as possible with the data you do have is generally better than excluding work-related transportation from your ESG report altogether. Use actual records where available, apply a consistent methodology every year, and document any assumptions you make.

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