In each issue of Business Travel Executive, the members of our Buyer Think Tank offer their individual thoughts on what’s hot, what’s cool and what’s coming next in managed travel.
The Think Tank is a team of nine veteran travel managers from programs that run the gamut in size and complexity – but each member contributes a unique viewpoint. Travel Buyer’s POV brings fresh perspectives and ideas to inspire innovation and thought leadership in the corporate travel industry.
As the traveler experience increasingly takes center stage, the questions around travel policy – what it should look like, how it should be enforced, should there even be one – are more critical than ever. The good news is, travel buyers have the tools, data and processes available to them to tailor policies specific to their corporate culture, their business objectives and even to their travelers.
In this month’s Point of View, our Think Tank members look at the complexity of these policies and their changing role in corporate travel.
Success Is In the Details
Travel policy is the cornerstone of any corporate travel program. Most of your approach to how to manage company travel spend is dependent on the policy. Careful attention to culture, goals and ownership of the policy is key to a successful document. Inside the Silicon Valley environment that I am part of, there are many versions of policy. Many large, relatively young companies here are more relaxed in their approach, while older, more established companies like mine tend to have a more explicit policy.There are myriad ways to write travel policy. When you do it, make sure you get support from your C-level executives. Make it as simple as possible. That said, at NetApp we have a combined expense and travel policy document. That may not be ideal in a young company where Millennials tend not to read long documents.
Mark Ziegler
mark.ziegler@netapp.com
Travel Policy “D’oh!”
To paraphrase the famous poet laureate, Homer Simpson, travel policies are “the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems”. While Homer was talking about beer, the phrase still applies to the dreaded travel policy. On the solution side, policies provide structure companies need to ensure their employee spending is optimized. It’s important to provide these rules, but more important to enforce them. You don’t need 20 pages of rules (which of course, we all have), but boundaries help people not to go off the deep end.On the other side, policies create tension in a company – everyone is a travel expert because they take leisure trips. Employees are often insistent they can find something cheaper without thinking through how this isn’t just a single trip at a single time. By using your policy as an educational starting point, you can get buy-in on more holistic savings while keeping those employees safe.
Rosemary E Maloney
rmaloney@coach.com
Cure for Insomnia?
Travel policy details guidelines and procedures an employee must follow when traveling on behalf of the company. It sounds so easy, but much of its success depends on how it’s presented. A policy that fits a truly global company is even more challenging. Clear cross-cultural interpretation, different operational structures and capabilities increase complexity.The result is usually lots of pages of pretty boring reading. Maybe a more effective way would be to take the employee-traveler’s perspective, using the booking process to guide the traveler. If your program provides travelers with the right products for a successful trip – within policy – you face a lot less resistance and gain more compliance. But regardless of complexity, policy should adapt to rapid changes in business travel and the traveler’s demands.
David Smith
davidmark.smith@amdocs.com
50 Pages of Gray
The corporate travel policy is one of the most important shared documents within a corporation. I have worked with companies where policies have ranged from a simple two-pager to massive documents of over thirty pages. There is no right answer as to which is correct, but I tend toward somewhere in the middle. Some policies only focus on travel while others incorporate expense guidelines where the company has to address the many “gray” areas travelers seem to land.Whatever the size, frequent review and updates are essential. As the world of travel is constantly changing, keeping policy up-to-date helps travelers stay informed and mitigates any duty of care issues.
Chris Brockman
chris@wholdings.travel
Policy of One
Travel policies are designed to provide guidance and procedures to travelers so they are able to follow proper booking behaviors. The challenge with an inflexible, ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy is that there are always so many exceptions to the rules. I’m looking forward to the time, probably not far off, when travel buyers have the tools and technology to truly create a policy of one – meaning we present the most logical and cost effective options to each traveler that actually create the most value for each individual trip. Incorporating the factors of frequent traveler programs, travel preferences and policy to make logical sense on a trip will be a win-win for everyone.
Jennifer Steinke
jennifer.steinke@ppdi.com
Guidelines vs Straitjackets
“Is our travel policy a strict policy or a guideline?” This is a question that I am frequently asked and one that is sometimes hard to answer. In my opinion, it’s a little of both but as I am currently rewriting the policy, I am questioning this myself. I’ve never wanted our team to be the ‘travel police’ yet we find ourselves in that situation every day. With the continued focus on traveler friction and engagement, what is the right path for the company? What’s lowest cost may not always be the best value. I feel that it should be a common-sense approach to being fiscally responsible in our actions. Someone once told me our founder had the saying “spend the company’s money as you would your own.” Maybe he was ahead of his time in terms of traveler/employee satisfaction. But would this work today?
Cheryl Benjamin
cheryl.benjamin@dart.biz
