On Oct. 4, 2023, three travel managers from companies in the life sciences sector joined Jay Campbell from The Company Dime as part of the ongoing Town Hall series co-hosted on LinkedIn Audio by Business Travel Executive.
Danielle Amoroso, associate director of travel and expense at Otsuka America Pharmaceutical; Lindsay Balram, associate director of global T&E at Alkermes; and Pedro Ceron, senior director of global travel management at BeiGene, discussed recent corporate travel policy revisions, how they communicate policy changes, traveler wellness and the elusive return on investment in business travel. Here’s a compilation of their key quotes and top tips taken from that conversation.
On Organizing Policy
Otsuka America
• New regional travel and expense policy covers dozens of operating companies
• Designed by a committee representing all affiliates
• Customized to fit organizations in various industries
• Went live in 2022
Amoroso: “A lot of changes have come through as a result of the hybrid working environment, for example, what employees are allowed to expense and reimbursement for mileage. I find it helpful to have travel and expense policies under one umbrella. I manage both functions, and they’re so closely intertwined that it makes managing the travel much easier because I know what employees are submitting on expense reports and, vice-versa, how travel industry changes correlate to the expense policy.”
Alkermes
• First full travel and expense policy redesign in several years now underway
• Follows pre-COVID structure with some tweaks and pandemic-era Standard Operating Procedure guiding document
Balram: “We have an amazing opportunity now to make some significant changes to our policy and finally embed more traveler-centric items to try to make their travel journey a little better.”
BeiGene
• First policy established in late 2019
• “Be Safe” COVID policy accommodated extra handholding and border crossing support
• Travel collaborated with expense and card administration to create a global T&E policy
Ceron: “Safety is paramount, right? And security and duty of care. Our philosophy with the travel program is that it’s our job to deliver value for the spend, provide the mechanisms and processes to make booking travel and managing travel easier, and provide service.”
On Communicating Policy
BeiGene
• Posts to intranet page and hosts webinars, providing recordings
• Offers “How do I?” page with typical questions
Ceron: “Communication is key. We consider our [policy] document a living document. We added over 2,000 employees throughout the pandemic. That changed us. We added multiple departments, disciplines and systems. And as we change internally, the policy has to respond to that, because a process or some rule might change and we manage that. We don’t have a solid schedule for updates that says we will make a change every quarter. We wait until we have a significant enough change to the policy. We send out a global e-mail about it. We have an internal newsletter that we use.”
Amoroso: “Especially post-pandemic, our employees are inundated with information. So, we decided to take a bit of a creative spin on this with a visual interactive video that walks them through the most important pieces of the policy. We leaned on a multitude of departments. Our great learning and development team on-site helped me build this out. We looped in communications and HR because so many policies intertwine with HR that relate to employees and behaviors.”
On Wellness
Alkermes
• Considering small policy changes that can produce a significant impact
• Encouraging less frequent but longer trips
• TMC dashboard monitors for stress and flags employees who should be contacted: “Is there anything we can do for you?”
Balram: “We’re being a little more flexible. We might be adding in some perks. It doesn’t have to be anything that costs a lot of money. We’re looking at meal limits and the guidance there, making sure that what we give them will make sense for making healthy meal choices when they’re on the road and encouraging them to do that. We’ve been looking at our preferred hotels. Hotels have little fitness rooms, which doesn’t necessarily satisfy the need. We have quite a few travelers who would love to have a safe walking or jogging path near the hotel. So we identify where it makes sense and is available, and encourage them to get outside and get some fresh air after a long day.
“We’ve been looking at our air travel class policies. Are we supporting them in a way that makes sense? Especially road warriors. There is a large spotlight on that work-life balance.
Amoroso: “We allow our employees to fly business class over five hours, which is a very generous policy. We also enable our employees to make sure that they account for additional days off to account for their travel days. We hosted a wellness fair that ended up being a combined travel fair with HR/benefits. All our suppliers came forward and met with our employees to tell their wellness stories.
Ceron: “We are generally an economy class policy because we’re a company that’s focused on cancer treatments to as many people as possible, making them affordable and accessible. Whatever dollar we spend on travel is a dollar we cannot spend on research and development. And with that mentality and that behavior, we also want to make sure that we’re not burning our people out because they do travel on long international flights or frequent domestic flights. We’re looking at a change to the policy right now that would be more accommodating to those doing a lot of transcon.
“To support that, we provide for essentially some ancillary expenditures. So you are in economy, but you can upgrade to more room. You can pay for something that will make it more comfortable for you. If you are a frequent flyer and you’re not flying in business class, we have a dynamic policy that says that if you have flown for over six hours internationally in the previous 45 days, your next trip can be in business class. That helps provide breathing room to those who have to travel long distances but are technically unable to travel in business class. We also provide some exclusions for that for wellness reasons.”
On Business Travel ROI
Balram: “My company has asked me to dig into ROI. It’s not easy to calculate or correlate, but our largest traveling base is [approximately 700] field salespeople within our organization in the United States. So I’ve been working closely with our commercial teams to see how we can – and does it make sense to – look at their sales targets and their goals and what they’ve been doing. It may not be a perfect science, but we’re trying to at least start there because a lot of the travel those sales folks are doing is directly related to our product.”
Ceron: “We typically don’t think of ourselves as guardians of anyone’s budget, but it’s our job to provide the right metrics and spend levels appropriate for different regions. There’s a cost to travel, but there’s a price to pay also for not traveling. I think it would be virtually impossible to come up with one metric that will give every company their ROI on travel, but if you look at life sciences, congresses and conferences are their window to the world. If you do not show up, that has a price attached to it. Your business could be hurt because you’re not getting your message and your product out in front of the right people in the right way. So, in our industry, travel is a must for those reasons. I think we could look internally and ask, ‘Is travel a must for a department meeting internally?’ That’s where some of these metrics make more sense on a company-by-company basis. What is the value of bringing people together? It’s a really appropriate question post-pandemic where we have a more distributed workforce.”
Amoroso: “I think the ROI on travel is very subjective. Travel connects us all and builds relationships. While it might not have immediate cost savings or revenue generation, at some point in the future, it could. And that’s very difficult to calculate.”
