CRN Tech Impact: Computacenter to introduce travel tax

'It is time for Computacenter's voice to be heard on sustainability,' its new sustainability programme lead, Clare Parry-Jones, tells CRN

Computacenter is introducing an internal tax designed to encourage staff to travel only when necessary.

During an exclusive interview with CRN for this afternoon's Tech Impact Summit and Awards, Computacenter's Clare Parry-Jones said it is "time for [Computacenter's] voice to be heard" when it comes to sustainability.

View the Tech Impact Summit and Awards on demand here.

Computacenter is the UK's largest reseller/IT services provider, with 17,000 staff and revenues of £5.4bn.

It is one of three leading UK channel partners CRN visited to see how each is tackling sustainability (the other two being Softcat [video here] and Jigsaw24 [video here]).

Parry-Jones was appointed to the new position of sustainability programme lead earlier this year to communicate what Computacenter is doing - and what it is about to do - around sustainability to staff and customers.

"There's a huge amount of greenwash out there, and at Computacenter we typically focus on doing rather than saying," she told CRN (see film, above).

"It's important for customers, employees and investors to understand that we do have a position on this and we are focused on it."

Computacenter completed the installation of solar panels at its Hatfield HQ in 2019 (which at the time was the largest project of its kind in Europe), and expects 75 per cent of energy across its group to be from renewables by the end of the year.

It will also formally publish an ESG strategy towards the end of Q3, Parry-Jones revealed.

"What we are also doing is introducing a travel tax or green tax - I'm not quite sure what we're going to call it," she added.

"That means we will be encouraging people to only travel on planes, trains and cars when necessary, and also to stay over only when necessary. Clearly, customer meetings and getting together with your teams is important, but what we want to do is make people think twice. There will be a tax on that as we book our travel and that will be used either to offset or put back into other programmes of work for us."