Here we are – already halfway through 2019. This is the time of year we all reevaluate our travel programs – contract performance, expense management, and our overall program health. Shouldn’t this also be the time we evaluate our traveler satisfaction, health and burnout rate? Could our program success and traveler burnout be related? In some ways, I think they are.
Think about this: if you get tired (burned out) in your personal life, you begin to have a “whatever-is-easiest” mentality. You take shortcuts, make decisions which may not be the most cost effective, and sometimes get to a point of not caring. Why would we expect any different from our road warriors? For the betterment of the company, they’re away from their home, family and what brings them comfort.
While I’m not a proponent of letting traveler’s book outside our managed program, I am aware of the stress that travel has on a person. As the spouse of a former road warrior, I saw first-hand the toll that being gone week-after-week has both mentally and physically. To help identify this stress, maybe we should approach our mid-year program review with an additional focus.
It could be something as simple as reviewing travel patterns for this group of travelers, looking at such factors as advance purchase, post trip expenses, etc., to determine if anything has changed in their spending. If not, great! But if there is a trend of higher than normal expenses, booking outside the program, or shorter advance purchase, it may be time to raise the flag. Not the naughty note flag – rather, a conversation with the traveler, the immediate supervisor or HR professional, out of concern for the individual.
We identify a road warrior as someone who travels 25 percent or more for the company. This may be a low number but when you remove weekends, vacations and holidays, the number is approximately 60 days per year, or a week a month.
One that stood out is an internal travel council which includes a variety of travelers (from infrequent to road warrior), admins and VP or higher management. The idea isn’t for the tail to wag the dog; instead it is open communication with a goal of building a program that works for most.
This manager shared with me that most of all, those on the front line just want to be heard, and to trust that we – the Travel Department – are doing all we can to understand their needs. They are not asking for the luxury property when policy calls for something moderate. It is up to us, and our suppliers, to understand what is considered a value to our traveler.
This reflects what Scott Gillespie and others have been educating us on for several years now – traveler friction and engagement/satisfaction. It took a while for the concept to be embraced as we all have budgets to manage and it seems we’re constantly being tasked to deliver more for less. And yes, it takes time to make adjustments to our programs to meet the new requests that our travelers bring us. As I tell my team on a regular basis – we have two customers, the travelers and management. It is not easy to find common ground but if we can, then we have just increased the value of our services.
A critical aim of any organization is to recruit and retain employees. The costs to replace valued employees is high. If we can get in front of potential issues of traveler burnout by monitoring our program in a new way, we can add one more feather in our cap of cost control, be an advocate for the traveler, and potentially find new ways we can make the road warrior less road weary.
