Business travelers need to know when enough is enough – and recognize the warning signs before it’s too late.
How much travel is too much? That’s a tough question for you business travelers to answer. It’s more likely that you’ll know it only after you’ve reached your breaking point. One too many missed birthdays or anniversaries, or maybe it’s the accumulation of stress in a relationship caused by too many short-notice trips. Maybe it’s the dreadful thought of those 300 unread e-mails waiting for you after a long and hectic overseas trip.
Or maybe it’s your body saying enough is enough.
Consider these findings about the impact of travel:
• Jet lag significantly affects about 60-70 percent of travelers
• Eastward travel causes significantly stronger symptoms of jet lag than westward travel
• Typical jet lag symptoms include sleep loss (more so if you are a morning person), gastrointestinal problems, depression, irritability, disorientation and lack of concentration
• Significant sleep loss leads to poor reaction times, which is a major contributor to automobile accidents
• The risk of pulmonary thromboembolism quadruples on flights over 8 hours, although this is still a very small risk for most travelers
• Three-quarters of international travelers reported high or very high stress before and during travel
The Travel Friction FactorDo all these travel-related effects really add up to measurable business outcomes? Yes, they do. Consider this: A 2008 study of the win/loss records of major league baseball teams over a 10-year period concluded that the home team has a distinct advantage when the visiting team recently traveled across three or more time zones. Jet lag may affect individuals differently, but when you look at the cumulative effects across a team, it’s hard to conclude that travel doesn’t matter.
Our firm, tClara, measures travel friction, or the wear and tear on travelers, based on data from those travelers’ ticketed itineraries. Our data on over 150,000 business travelers suggests another important cost of too much travel. We’ve found, unsurprisingly, a very strong correlation between excessive travel and attrition.
But what is excessive travel?If you are in the top 5 percent of all business travelers, here’s what you’ve likely done in the last 12 months:
• Spent more than 200 hours in flight, not counting time in airports
• Flown two-thirds of those hours on your personal time – on weekdays before 8:00 AM or after 6:00 PM, or on weekends
• Crossed more than 80 time zones
• Spent 10 or more weeks away from home
Clearly some road warriors can handle this much travel. But many cannot, for reasons related to their performance at work, changes in their career ambitions, or their relationships at home. The trick is to recognize the risk of burning out on travel, and doing something proactive about it.
A Self-DiagnosticTry answering these simple questions for a quick assessment of your potential risk for burning out on travel:
• I spend a lot of time traveling
• I often feel more stress than usual in the days before a trip
• I worry about the impact of my traveling on my personal life
• I am often given little advance notice about my trips
• I fear flying or traveling in general more than most people
• I will likely be traveling more in the next few months than I have in the last few months
• I find it hard to keep up with my workload when traveling
• I find it hard to maintain a healthy lifestyle when traveling
• I doubt I could find a good job that doesn’t require a lot of travel
• I would rather travel less often than to travel more comfortably
While this is not a scientific survey, it seems obvious that the more questions you agree with, the more risk you have of burning out on travel. If you are at risk, what can you do about it? What can your employer do? We’ll tackle those questions in future articles.
Learn more about travel friction at Scott’s blog, Gillespie’s Guide to Travel + Procurement