Some hard facts about sustainable business meetings and events

How to organise business meetings in a sustainable way and not only capture CO₂ emissions, but also reduce costs and ensure the well-being of your employees.

Every Sunday…

while jogging, I use the creative flow to think of how, for instance, to present a complex topic like sustainable event management or how to motivate my bosses to do so. The thing with wanting to organise business meetings and events in a sustainable way is that you have to convince the responsible manager first that the whole thing makes sense. Managers may be responsible for the budget for their meetings and events, but they are mostly unfamiliar with the event organisation procedure. They and the other people in charge of organising their events are even less aware of the aspects concerning sustainability, or at least that's my impression. It is precisely these aspects that provide excellent opportunities to save on costs, of which some can be considerable.

The idea behind holding everyday workday meetings and events is to bring business processes forward; after all, it's all about the success of our company, isn’t it. Every organised event, including a sustainable one, has to serve this purpose. Travel arrangements for employees and the location give rise to considerable costs. Not only can massive amounts of CO₂ emissions be saved here, but, and as a welcome side effect so to speak, costs can also be significantly decreased and the well-being of employees raised.

How and where do we start?

For example, we can develop a more comprehensive understanding of sustainability with the help of sustainable development goals (SDGs). Prof. Ulrich Holzbaur provides an excellent basis for understanding this with his work "Nachhaltige Entwicklung." Der Weg in eine lebenswerte Zukunft" (in German only). ISO 20121:2021 represents an international standard for sustainable event organisation and serves to deepen the knowledge in the subject area. The standard allows for a sustainable approach. We briefly outline this in the following section with regard to our focal topic of arranging the travel for business meetings:

• We record the CO₂ emissions that arise when organising a business meeting.

If you leave it just at that and offset what you consume, you might run the risk of being accused of modern "indulgence trading". However, you would also miss out on the following opportunities:

• We can derive possibilities for improvement, reduction or avoidance. These measures do not only serve to capture CO₂ emissions, but also aim at optimising them in both economic and social terms.

The following examples illustrate this:

Example 1. Global meeting of leaders: 30 people in a team fly from different continents around the globe to attend a meeting and gather for two days at a hotel venue from morning until night.

Example 2. DACH conference for the salesforce (20 people). The salesforce flies to Tenerife, Palma de Mallorca or Malaga for their three-day annual meeting.

 

First, we took a close look at the journeys using a CO₂ equivalence calculator (CO₂ calculator in short), and then, we looked at the cost side and social aspects as well.**

In Example 1, we could have reduced the CO₂ emissions by about 100 metric ton if the destination had been chosen to make the journey as short as possible for all participants. Unless the location is mandatory, the rule here is to determine the "geo-midpoint".

This, in turn, has an impact on the airfare and, beyond that, also includes a health aspect for the travellers. The time spent travelling could have been reduced by almost 50% on average.

In Example 2, we had almost the same effect (approx. 4 metric tonnes of CO₂ emissions), and clever planning would have allowed us to save a third of the time spent on overnight stay in hotels. As a consequence, this means less stress for the employees who also have to manage their private lives, be it with their partner, children or anyone else they have to take care of. A reduction in the amount of time spent travelling means more time left over for work or private life = wellbeing.

 

In some cases, of course, long journeys may be required for an event, and certain CO₂ emissions may very well be unavoidable in certain areas of activity because the destination is fixed and long flights are unavoidable. However, the decision in favour of this can at least be made knowing that all the possibilities for optimisation have been examined, CO₂ emissions are recorded and netting takes place.

The impact that one or two business meetings has is negligible. A few hours of extra travel time or a few tonnes of CO₂ emissions are manageable. That said, however, how many business meetings and trips do you organise or setup, each month, each year, in your department, or in your company? How many events do you attend?

An initial step: align your policies on business travel and business meetings sustainably

Travel policies provide a good start on the path to more sustainability for business meetings and events. To this day, meetings and even the journey to the destination are largely organised from an economic point of view: instead of a booking a direct flight, a choice is made in favour of a cheaper open jaw flight, and if the event location in Zurich is too expensive, then a flight is taken to a nearby foreign country, which also makes little economic sense. As a rule, travel policies only address safety and costs. Climate friendliness still plays too much of a backseat role. As a result, those organising the trips or negotiating with event partners have no policies in place for sustainable event organisation. Supply management, travel centres, staff units and not to forget all the self-bookers out there are literally left hanging in the air if companies do not set guidelines. Studies confirm that the majority of business travellers would like precisely this type of support; an example of this is the study from SAP Concur and the market research institute INNOFACT from 2019. It seems to me that we have a blind spot when it comes to sustainable heedfulness in relation to business trips and business meetings. Is sustainability only ever relevant when we talk about it at an event? Or is the organisation of the event, including the journey there and back, not also part of it? This would be a good place to start. We could then start to make the value chain for meetings and events truly sustainable.

 

Conclusion

Only recently, Prof. Ulrich Holzbaur pointed out in his article "Nachhaltigkeit muss gelebt werden" (in German only) that sustainability has to be consolidated in a company. In my opinion, this can only be achieved by moving from theory or announcements by communiqué into action. Business meetings and events, the working tools in our day-to-day working life in the office, offer an enormous opportunity to make a contribution to sustainable development, starting with travel organisation and sensitising managers and employees, as well as customers and suppliers, in terms of "sustainable heedfulness". You gradually end up including all the fields of activity in an event’s value chain and examine them with regard to sustainability aspects. In addition to saving costs and reducing CO2 emissions, the focus on sustainability also results in an image gain for the company.

If you have not yet dealt with the topic much or not at all so far, we recommend reading the book Quick Guide Nachhaltige Business-Meetings und -Events (in German only) as an introduction, which is due to be published soon. Furthermore, receiving advice or further training can support you in your work.

 

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* Within the framework of our book project, I have been able to access the C0₂ calculator from ECOSPEED AG, Zurich. I would like to thank Christoph Hartmann, Managing Director of ECOSPEED AG, for his support.

About the author. After completing her studies in Basel and Oldenburg, Elisabeth Brommer-Kern worked for global teams in Germany and Switzerland in the fields of administration, organisation and knowledge management and is now a freelance consultant and lecturer. Contact with Prof. Dr Ulrich Holzbaur, at Aalen University, Germany arose through a project on the topic of sustainable event management. The idea to write the Quick guide to sustainable business meetings and events emerged from the virtual discussion. Springer-Verlag published the Quick Guide in January 2022.

Kontakt: ebk@sjpdevelopment.ch /

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