Manage Climate Smart surveys

The Work from Home and Commuter Surveys are tools to gather inventory data directly from your organization’s employees. These surveys measure scope 3 emissions. Here’s how to manage surveys in Climate Smart.

If employees have questions about completing the surveys, share the survey FAQs with them.

On this page:

• Compare Work from Home and Commuter Survey
• Collect responses
• Close survey
• Modify survey
• Delete survey
• Privacy

Compare Work from Home and Commuter Survey

The Work from Home Survey estimates data about utilities consumed through remote work. The answers from the survey are entered into your inventory as unmetered/unbilled electricity, heat (from fuel), and heat (from electricity) (scope 3). 

The Commuter Survey collects information about how employees travel to work. The answers from the survey are entered into your inventory as staff commuting (scope 3).

Distribute both surveys if you have hybrid employees. This means you had any employees who worked from both employer locations (for example, an office or warehouse) and non-employer locations (for example, their home) during the inventory period.

Collect responses

Open a survey

Surveys can be started when you create a new inventory. We recommend sending out the survey as soon as possible to give employees more time to respond. The more responses you collect, the more robust your data will be.

To open a survey:

1. On your Climate Smart dashboard, scroll to Emissions Manager and click MANAGE next to your inventory.
2. Under Surveys, click the survey you want to open: + COMMUTER SURVEY or + WORK FROM HOME SURVEY

Your survey will be available to share.

Sharing the survey

Share or post your survey using a web link (also known as a URL). We recommend sending the invitation link by email to participants.

To find your survey link:

1. On your Climate Smart dashboard, scroll to Emissions Manager and click MANAGE next to your inventory.
2. Under Surveys, click the survey you want to share (Work from home or Commuter).
3. Under Total responses, next to Invite link, you’ll find the survey’s unique URL.
4. Copy the URL and paste it wherever you’d like.

Tips for introducing the survey

We recommend writing a short message about why you’re collecting data to encourage your organization to participate. You might want to mention:

• You’re estimating your emissions using the Climate Smart software and your team deemed it important to find out how commuting and working from home contributes to your organization’s greenhouse gas footprint
• Responses are anonymous and confidential
• Provide guidance on which location employees should select, especially remote employees
• Share a link to the survey FAQs 

Close survey

Close survey

When you’re ready to stop collecting responses from your employees, you can close the survey. Closing the survey extrapolates all the data you’ve collected. This means that even if every employee doesn’t answer the survey, the software interprets the data as if you received 100% response rate and applies those calculations to your inventory.

Note: Closing a survey is permanent. Once a survey is closed, it can’t be reopened. If needed, you can delete your survey and open a new one.

To close a survey:

1. On your Climate Smart dashboard, scroll to Emissions Manager and click MANAGE next to your inventory.
2. Under Surveys, click the survey you want to close (Work from home or Commuter).
3. Next to Track Responses, click CLOSE SURVEY.
4. In the pop-up, select the checkbox next to I want to close this survey.
5. Click CLOSE to permanently close the survey.

Note: If a location as an icon next to its response rate, this means that less than 50% of the employees who work there answered the survey. We recommend waiting until you reach at least a 50% response rate before closing the survey.

Response rate

You can keep the survey open for as long as you want. However, we recommend reaching at least a 50% response rate. This means at least half of your employees have answered the survey. This percentage compares the number of responses you’ve received to the number of employees you’ve recorded in Climate Smart for each location.

You can quickly check your survey response rate near the bottom of your inventory page.

To check your survey response rate for each location:

1. On your Climate Smart dashboard, scroll to Emissions Manager and click MANAGE next to your inventory.
2. Under Surveys, click the survey you want to check (Work from home or Commuter).
3. On the survey page, review your total responses and the response rate for each location in your inventory.

On the survey page, you can review the response rates (%), number of responses, and number of employees for your locations.

Modify survey

Surveys cannot be modified or customized. If you want to gather additional data but you’re not sure how to collect it, ask your Climate Smart Advisor (if applicable).

Delete survey

Deleting a survey also removes its data from your inventory. We do not normally recommend deleting a survey. If you want to stop collecting responses, we recommend closing the survey instead.

To delete a survey:

1. On your Climate Smart dashboard, scroll to Emissions Manager and click MANAGE next to your inventory.
2. Under Surveys, click the survey you want to delete (Work from home or Commuter).
3. At the bottom of this page, click DELETE SURVEY.
4. In the pop-up, select the checkbox next to I want to permanently delete this survey and its data.
5. Click DELETE to permanently delete the survey.

Privacy

Survey responses are anonymous and confidential. We don’t collect identifying information of respondents, such as their name or email address. For more information, review our privacy policy.