The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly restructured how companies will handle business dealings henceforth and, more specifically, how they plan on executing business travel and “luxury” spending in the period of recovery. This, hand in hand with the ever-looming environmental crisis, contributed greatly to a new decision from The Boston Consulting Group to discontinue an all-expenses-paid European vacation for graduates entering work at the London office and take steps towards reducing the carbon footprint of the company.
Previously, those hired to the London branch of the firm were sent on an all-inclusive weekend trip to European destinations such as Lisbon or Florence for a selection of group indulgences, including wine-tastings and catered food services. Now, in an attempt to be conscious of both travel restrictions and the environmental impact of air travel, the company’s executives have decided that these trips will be excluded from future graduate proceedings.
BCG is, instead, pledging to reduce the carbon footprints of all students by at least 50% by 2025, and beginning to implement train travel as an alternative means of transportation for employees across European offices. In another emission-reducing effort on behalf of the company, all employees of BCG’s Nordic divisions will also convert to flying on airlines which utilize sustainable aviation fuel, like SAS and Finnair. This fuel, made from recycled fats and vegetable oils, has the potential to cut aviation-caused greenhouse gasses by as much as 80%.
This trend of making the zero-net-zero climate commitment is much needed for many professional service companies like BCG, Deloitte, and KCMG—all of which can attribute 75% of their annual carbon emissions to business travel. Consultancies Capgemini and Cognizant have also recently announced a collective $900 million cut to their travel expenses.
Many of these companies are looking for innovative ways to restructure remaining business travel in a productive and less impactful way. Quite a few, as is the case with BCG, plan to compensate for lessened travel through virtual interactions, in addition to designing multi-purpose, extended business trips as opposed to more frequent singular ones.
