Employee Survey Template
Some emission categories require data points that might not be readily available in existing databases and systems. Instead, you might need to source them by conducting surveys. The emissions which typically can only be calculated using data sourced from surveys are:
We designed a survey template for you that covers all required data points for these emission categories.
Important: This is a Google Forms template and therefore requires you to sign in to a Google account to use it. Recipients of the final survey are not required to sign in to a Google Account.
Click 🇩🇪 here for the German version and 🇫🇷 here for the French version.
You will be prompted to make a copy of the template.
This will save the template to your personal Google Drive where you can adjust it based on your needs and send it to your employees afterwards.
Adjusting the template
The template is supposed to be your quick start in collecting your Employee Commute, Working from Home and/or Business Travel data. Within the template, we highlighted the sections that you should customise to your own business’s circumstances. Don’t hesitate to adjust any element according to your needs though.
Just keep in mind that the template has been created in a way that responses can easily be translated into data points relevant to your emissions calculation.
Even more importantly: Each survey you send out to your employees means that you are demanding time from them. We all know how precious time is so always make sure to only survey the essentials. Value the time your employees take to fill in your survey.
Let’s walk through the required adjustments first and some optional considerations after.
Required adjustments
[COMPANY] and [MONTH] placeholders
Make sure to replace [COMPANY] with your organisation’s name (e.g. Plan A’s). Keep in mind that the survey should be sent out monthly, so make sure your recipients know what data exactly the survey is asking for (e.g. May 2022).
Office / Facility options
Replace the options in the question “Which office do you belong to?” by all the offices or facilities that are applicable and that you do Carbon Accounting for (e.g. “Berlin”, “Paris”). If you are surveying people from a single facility only, you can of course delete this question.
Optional template adjustments
Banner image
To make sure your survey is in line with your corporate identity and to increase engagement, consider adding for example your company logo or banner to the survey header.
Survey introduction
Keep in mind that your recipients might not know what Carbon Accounting is or who Plan A is. Consider adjusting this paragraph accordingly. Remember that there’s also the email or other communication way which you will use to distribute the survey! It’s important to already summarise the key information there.
Working from Home
The options in the section “Your Work-From-Home (WFH) pattern usually don’t require an adjustment unless you (1) are a fully remote company or (2) established a 4-day week or similar. In those cases, just (1) remove the section or (2) adjust the options accordingly.
Commuting options
You might notice that we have included an additional option “Other” to the survey template which is currently not a field that the Plan A Platform would accept or allow you to enter. The reason we added this option is to identify early when employees use a significant amount of transportation modes other than currently covered by our emissions calculations.
This helps us to prioritise our Product development accordingly. If you decide to keep this extra option and notice a particular pattern in the responses, please let us know.
Business Travel
Business Travel is one of those categories that you might actually have data for via a travel management system. If that’s the case, simply delete the respective section.
The transport options of travelling for business are in line with what we can currently calculate emissions for. In case you have a no-flight policy or similar in place, then of course remove the non-applicable options.
The way we ask respondents to list their business trips is optimised to easily transform responses into a CSV file that can be uploaded via the Business Travel module.
Survey settings
Before you send out the survey to your list of recipients, review the survey settings if they fit your organisation and use case. Pay special attention to whether you would like to
- automatically collect email addresses
- send a response summary
- allow for multiple response submissions
The way the settings are configured when you copy the template is of course in accordance with what we recommend.
Sending the survey
Sending and communicating your survey is just as important as creating it.
Tip: We collected some general thoughts and ideas on conducting surveys on our Help Centre, including the response rate you should aim for.
Our favourite option is embedding the link to the survey (click the "Send" button in the upper right) in both (1) an email and (2) a Slack message in, e.g. the #general channel.
Here are a few rules to follow when you decide to send out an email containing your survey link:
Ideally, you should have communicated your company’s initiative to calculate its Corporate Carbon Footprint prior to sending out the first survey, for example during an all-hands call or management update.
Last but not least: Don't forget to send up to 2 reminders to your recipients!