Commuting diagnosis: the step your company is skipping in its ESG strategy

Many companies have already made visible progress on ESG initiatives, such as cutting energy use, managing waste, or offsetting fleet emissions. But when it comes to employees’ commute between home and work, most still lack a structured diagnosis. This blind spot undermines the completeness of the emissions inventory and limits decisions made by HR, Sustainability, and Operations.

Why commuting gets left out

The reason is simple: measuring energy or waste depends on internal data already available in bills and systems. Measuring commuting depends on individual information from each employee, which requires a specific collection process. Without that process, the category simply does not show up in the report, even though it is, in many sectors, one of the largest sources of Scope 3 emissions.

What a complete diagnosis reveals

A structured survey of origin, destination, mode of transport, and commuting frequency delivers three valuable pieces of information at once: the carbon footprint of commuting, the mobility cost profile, and the operational inefficiencies, such as employees making long trips with no access to collective transport.

How this strengthens ESG strategy

With that data in hand, Sustainability can report Scope 3.7 accurately, HR can redesign transport benefit policies based on evidence, and Operations can justify investments in shuttles, transport partnerships, or incentives for low-carbon modes. The diagnosis becomes the link between three areas that, without it, work in isolation.

Start with the basics

You do not need a complex system to get started. A simple form, applied to all employees and updated periodically, already provides the base needed for the first calculations. What matters is not leaving this category off the radar just because it seems harder to measure than the others.

If your company has not done this diagnosis yet, now is the right time. Ecomilhas helps structure this process from scratch, with recognized methodology and auditable results. Talk to our team.