Monitoring

1. Monitoring Success

Once your Travel Plan is active you need to regularly monitor the impact of the new measures and/or
policies that have been implemented. This will help to determine whether the overall objectives are
being met and progress has been made.  Any specific measures and initiatives that are regularly
checked are usually called "indicators".
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Remember that the monitoring and reviewing of your Travel Plan is a continuous, on-going process,
rather than an annual event.
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It is a good idea to produce a monitoring plan which sets out your indicators. This will assist you in
ensuring that you are collecting all the information required to assess whether your Travel Plan
targets are being achieved. It will also help you to identify priority initiatives for your organisation’s
Travel Plan going forward.
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Here is an  outline monitoring plan  that you can use as a template for developing your own monitoring
plan.
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There are numerous ways that you can monitor the progress of your Travel Plan and measure the
impact of particular measures and/or policies.

Download our Guidance Notes

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2. Maintaining Interest

It can be hard enough to get people interested in your Travel Plan in the first place, but it can be even
harder to maintain their enthusiasm. Therefore, it is important to continually refresh your Travel Plan
to keep it front of mind.
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You can do this by:

• Ensuring that the initiatives in place actually work. Have proper monitoring processes in
  place to demonstrate this.
• Keeping information current and up to date, i.e. update notice boards at regular intervals
  and remove out of date information.
• Setting up a feedback mechanism, e.g. an electronic mailbox to gather valuable feedback.
• Being aware of your organisation’s particular ethos. What works well for one may not be
  successful in another.
• Encouraging those who are travelling to work by sustainable modes to register on a
  sustainable travel database. This will allow for more targeted communication of key
  messages and initiatives in the future. The right messages going to the right people.
• Ongoing promotional and reward schemes throughout the year to ensure that there is
  regular communication and promotion of the Travel Plan amongst employees.
• Making it clear who to contact for assistance.

3. Refreshing the Message

Travel Plan marketing activity should not just be about the launch of the Travel Plan, it should be
about regular messages throughout the year.
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In order for your Travel Plan to be successful, you need to ensure that your approach is persistent
and long term. It is important to refresh the messages regularly in order for them to remain effective
and not just become background noise.
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Here are a few things to consider when thinking about refreshing your travel planning messages:

• Make use of key events/seasonal activities - use the Calendar of Sustainable Travel Related Events  and see how you could piggy back onto events/themes already taking place.
• Select a key theme (cost savings, health and wellbeing, environmental benefits) that you wish to focus on and build around this theme. For example, if you concentrated on the cost saving benefits when you launched your Travel Plan, consider focusing on health and wellbeing in Year 2. You can also link into active travel events or seasonal triggers such as New Year resolutions, start of the better weather or national health days/themes.
• Constant communication is important. Make sure you are using all available channels to communicate with your employees. Make use of the intranet, emails and notice boards as well as any Working Groups or Mode Groups that you have set up. Have a communications schedule in place with key messages that you wish to get across.
• Keep information up to date. Make sure that the information that is given to employees is up to date and accurate. Employees need to have confidence in the information that is provided. Out of date information will have a negative impact.
• Ensure that you build interest for your travel planning measures by running teaser style communications to build up the interest. Let employees know that there is something to look out for.
• Consider ad hoc incentives to support schemes such as a Bike to Work.  As your Travel Plan becomes more established you need to make sure that you maintain the profile of such schemes and look to encourage new members. This could be offering a FREE bike maintenance service to existing Bike to Work members and to any new recruits who join the scheme during a particular time period. To encourage interest in your car sharing scheme, you could consider offering a reward to the first 10 employees to register on the car sharing database in a given week.
• Reward sustainable travel. This type of reward approach will not only encourage others to sign up, but it will also help to maintain the enthusiasm of those already travelling sustainably. You could offer free coffee/tea vouchers for those who cycle/walk to work over a given period.
• Consider partnership opportunities as a good way to refresh your Travel Plan. Approach local bus/train operators about offering discounted rates on travel passes for a limited period. You may also wish to team up with other local employees to promote car sharing for example. There may be an opportunity to extend your organisation’s car sharing scheme to incorporate employees from a neighbouring organisation.
• Look for opportunities to link into other initiatives throughout the organisation. This could include programmes such as Health and Wellbeing events.