Instead of doing a full-blown Employee Travel Survey, you could go for a spot-count to monitor progress and ask the key question:

How did you travel the main part of your journey to work today?

Answer options: Bus, Bicycle,Car, as driver, on your own, Car, as driver, with others, Car, as passenger, Walk, Motorbike, Train or Other (please specify).

These spot counts can be done annually by questioning employees at their desks or alternatively at the entrances to your site/buildings. Alternatively, you could email all employees asking them how they got to work that day. This is a quick and easy way to collect data and can be repeated on an ongoing basis.

When choosing the most appropriate method of spot count, you need to be mindful of sampling bias. For example, employees who do not have access to a computer at work (who cannot be captured on an email/online survey) are often those on lower incomes and so less likely to travel by car.It is still important to find a way of including them in a survey. Also those who drive alone might be reluctant to respond. You need to consider which option is going to be most appropriate for your organisational structure.

Sample sizes

Depending on the size of your organisation, you may wish to consider just using a representative sample of employees from across the business rather than all employees.

If your organisation operates a card/ swipe based car park, you may be able to automatically monitor the car usage and number of people travelling in the car on a daily basis. Another valuable source of information!

Remember, to ensure that the results are robust, stick to the same method of collection for before and after your spot-counts so that a comparison can be made.