It is a myth that employees in your company who travel on
business resent the corporate travel policy.
The truth is, employees like to know what is expected of them and how to
comply with a corporate policy as long as that policy is fair and give them the
ability to what they need to do on the road.
So a well thought out corporate travel policy is a benefit to the
company and the business traveler alike.
If it has been given to you to put together a corporate
travel policy, your mission from the stand point of the company is to develop a
policy that standardizes business expenses, eliminates waste and excess on the
road and puts some controls around that part of the business expense picture. So there are some definite focus areas you
should include in the stated corporate policy including…
§ Reservations. If you utilize a travel agent that is looking
for the best deal for the company. The
best rates can be identified and taken advantage off but only while making sure
the business traveler’s needs to meet the business objective of the trip are
satisfied. Requiring that employees
utilize the corporate travel agent again is not harsh and it clarifies for the
employee how to handle the situation.
§ Use
of credit. It is a bit of effort and
expense to set up corporate credit cards that you can require your traveling
employees to use. But by trapping
expenses to the corporate account, you can get a record of a good percentage of
the business expenses that the employee is incurring. Many
of the expenses of travel such as airline and hotel can be direct billed back
to the company thus taking both the hassle and the opportunity for creativity
out of the hands of the business traveler.
§ Travel
rewards. If you have your corporate
travel coordinated by an internal or external travel agency, corporate accounts
with the major airlines can be established so the frequent flyer miles can be
collected by the business. As such the business
can redeem those miles and realize those benefits as a significant discount on
the travel that must be paid for.
§ Daily
limits. Your corporate travel policy
must communicate clearly to the traveling employee what their limits are for
hotel, rental car and meals on the road.
You want to head off before it starts any tendency by the employee to go
to expensive restaurants and see the business trip as some form of all expenses
paid vacation. But you also must allow
for some leverage for the employee to eat well while traveling. This part of the policy should be reviewed
annually to update to current costs.
§ Reporting. One of the chief complaints employees have
about corporate travel policies are that the expense reporting system is
cryptic and hard to fill out. You will
give the employee a standardized form that each traveler in the company must
fill out to get reimbursed for expenses while traveling. But review these forms and even design your
own so the format is understandable and you have categories to cover all types
of expenses the employee might encounter.
Along with these general categories, your corporate travel
policies should include some leverage for employees who are faced with
exceptional situations. Room and food
expenses can vary widely depending on where the employee must travel. So you don’t want to set the hotel limit to
$125 per night because it is reasonable to stay in a comfortable hotel for that
rate in Lincoln Nebraska but enforce that same limitation for an employee who
must do business in New York City.
By creating a policy that in general protects the corporate
budget but is also workable to employees who are about the company business,
you will have a tool that will serve both company and employee interests and
enable business travel to be what it was always intended to be – a productive
business focused activity that achieves the goals of the enterprise.
