In recent years, some companies have been offering a new type of leave. Employees meeting the required conditions may benefit from additional days of rest.
The acquisition of paid leave was a profound development for the rights of employees in France. This victory, won after a heavy struggle, now allows workers to benefit from real periods of rest, far from the constraints of everyday life, without having to give up on their salary. In France, companies are therefore obliged to grant at least five weeks of paid leave to their employees.
Since then, this fundamental right has been enriched with various variations and extensions: RTT (reduction of working hours), bridges, public holidays, parental leave, etc. In short, today we can organize our schedule in various ways in order to maximize these precious moments of respite while making the most of our loved ones.
But a new form of leave has been discreetly added to this list recently: TTR, or Responsible Travel Time. Adopted by certain environmentally conscious companies, this initiative could well transform the way in which the French approach their long-distance travel, particularly when going on vacation.
The principle of TTR? Encourage employees to opt for eco-friendly journeys. Concretely, those who choose the train, the bus, carpooling or the bicycle, in short less polluting means of transport, instead of the plane to travel benefit from additional days of leave. Because, unfortunately, as the days off are numbered, vacationers often find themselves faced with a dilemma: opt for the plane and reach their destination quickly, or choose the train, even if the journey is longer, in order to preserve the planet ? This system aims to reward employees’ efforts to limit their carbon footprint by offering them additional rest time.
At Ubiq, the pioneering French company in this area, an employee benefits from one day of TTR every six months, or two days per year maximum, which can be divided into half-days. To benefit from it, employees must provide proof of their journey (invoice or proof of payment) and the journey must last at least six hours. Two and a half years after the introduction of this special leave, 50% of employees used it to go to Italy, Spain or Corsica. It just goes to show that there is a real demand!
This initiative has gradually spread to other French companies, such as HomeExchange. And France is far from being the only country to introduce such days off! To date, 128 organizations, including law firms, architectural agencies, consulting groups, associations have adopted this leave around the world.
These special days of rest allow companies to display concrete commitments to reducing CO₂ emissions. The first results are also convincing: at Ubiq, this initiative has made it possible to reduce the number of plane journeys by fifty. And suffice to say that it is essential because, if we are to believe the Datagir site, run by the Ecological Transition Agency (Ademe), the train emits on average two hundred times less greenhouse gases than the plane for a trip to France or a European destination.
But the TTR remains a system that is still too little adopted and regulated by French legislation. However, the European directive known as CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive), adopted in 2022, opens up interesting prospects. This directive identifies and encourages the sustainable development of companies, in particular by asking them to disseminate their carbon footprint. If vacations are not yet part of employers’ environmental commitments, they could become so if the Member States of the European Union decide to take up this subject.