How Jyske Bank hit 83% response on its employee carbon survey

Customer: Jyske Bank — one of Denmark's largest banks

Industry: Financial services

Purpose: Capture employee commuting CO2 emissions for the annual corporate sustainability report

Target: 1,000 responses · Achieved: 83 % response rate from approximately 4,000 employees

Survey length: Under 2 minutes

First inclusion in CO2 accounting: 2022 — now a permanent annual fixture

Most people who don't walk or cycle to work can't answer that with any precision. But if you work at Jyske Bank — and you were one of the roughly 4,000 employees who took part in the commuting survey — you now have a concrete answer.

That answer is both a data point in the bank's CO2 accounting and a piece of personal information each employee can use to make more deliberate transport choices. The same two-minute survey did both jobs at once.

Jyske Bank chose to survey employees directly because national averages from Statistics Denmark were too imprecise for the bank's CO2 accounting. The bank could have pulled aggregate commuting data from public statistics and applied it to headcount — but the result would have been a number with no grounding in the actual commuting patterns of Jyske Bank's specific workforce.

There was a second reason as well: bringing employees into the data collection raised awareness of the issue. The bank doesn't get involved in how employees choose to travel — but if a survey could give employees their own emissions number to think about, that was a worthwhile outcome alongside the corporate sustainability data.

The survey had two parallel purposes: provide the documentation the bank needed for its CO2 accounting in the annual sustainability report, and raise awareness among employees about their own commuting emissions. Both purposes shaped the survey design, and both purposes were achieved by the same two-minute questionnaire.

The bank's sustainability report covers CO2 emissions from electricity, heating, business travel, company vehicles, and emissions at suppliers and customers. Employee commuting is part of the same picture — and as Janna Ebdrup puts it: "We're asking people to come to the office. That also weighs on the climate scale."

Two purposes, one survey

• Corporate documentation: precise, organisation-specific commuting data for the annual CO2 accounting and sustainability report.
• Individual awareness: every participating employee received their own emissions number — useful context for making more deliberate transport choices going forward.

Three deliberate design choices drove the response rate. First, the questionnaire was kept under two minutes by ruthlessly limiting the questions to what was strictly necessary — and what was directly relevant to the individual employee. Second, distribution was timed with a news story on Jyske Bank's internal TV channel that explained the purpose, the use, and the anonymity of the survey before it landed in inboxes. Third, the survey gave something back: each respondent saw their own emissions number plus context about how it compared to the Danish average.

The bank's target was 1,000 responses. They hit 1,500 on the day of launch. The final response rate landed at 83% — a number that for a voluntary employee survey of this size is exceptional and a direct outcome of treating the participants as people with limited time and real interest, not as a compliance population.

Three design choices behind the 83% response rate

• Deliberately short questionnaire: under two minutes, limited to the questions strictly necessary for the CO2 calculation.
• Internal communications timing: the bank's internal TV channel ran the story before the survey invitation arrived — purpose, use and anonymity all explained upfront.
• Value back to the respondent: every participant received their own emissions figure and context about how Danes commute on average — the survey gave information, not just took it.

Once data collection was complete and the results were processed, the bank shared the most interesting findings with the entire organisation through the same internal TV channel that had announced the survey. That meant employees who didn't take part still got to see what their colleagues had contributed to — and the bank closed the loop between asking for input and reporting back.

This step is what separates a one-off measurement from a sustainable annual programme. Employees who see their input result in visible communication are far more likely to take part the following year. And that's exactly what happened: employee commuting is now a permanent annual fixture in Jyske Bank's CO2 accounting.

• 83% response rate on a voluntary survey — significantly above target of 1,000 responses.
• Target hit and exceeded on day one: 1,500 responses by end of the launch day.
• Survey kept under 2 minutes through ruthless question prioritisation.
• Precise, organisation-specific commuting data — replacing imprecise national averages — now feeds the annual CO2 accounting.
• Employee commuting is now a permanent annual fixture in the bank's sustainability report.

Employee commuting is one of the carbon categories an organisation has the least direct control over — but also one of the categories where individual awareness can make a real difference. The bank is open about this: "It's limited how much an organisation can do (and wants to do) to change employees' commuting habits." The point of the survey is therefore not to dictate behaviour, but to give employees the information they need to make informed choices.

That framing matters for any organisation considering a similar measurement. The survey isn't a behavioural intervention. It's a transparency tool — for the corporate sustainability report, and for the individual employee who now knows what their own commute actually costs in CO2.