When I worked in a major pharmaceutical company, we used to have an expression:
Travel is just like cholesterol. There are good and bad types; we should encourage the good and reduce the bad.
The analogy worked beautifully back then but is even more relevant today as it can be applied across any industry and all travel programmes, while still remaining meaningful. I am in the fortunate position now of working with many different companies across various industries and therefore get to test the theory. Beyond there being good and bad types of travel, I'm often amazed at how many organisations can't articulate the role travel plays as a business enabler. If you're intrigued and want to discover the answers for your company, here are some ideas of where to start.
1. What role does business travel play in your company?
Is it to connect colleagues around the world? Or to spend face time with clients? Or to conduct technical audits of a complex building site? Unless you understand the reasons for travel, how can you go about building the right solution?
More importantly than this, travel patterns can help identify challenges elsewhere in the business. For instance, I've seen some prolific "commuter travel" where businesses have struggled to fill a key vacancy so instead employ someone from a different country and agree a travel allowance to allow them to fly in on a Monday morning and home on a Thursday evening. Is this a right or wrong business decision?
While these answers give you important information, this still doesn't get to the impact travel can have on your organisation, good or bad.
2. What deeper impact does business travel have on a company?
Sit in any large company lobby and you'll spot the travellers arriving and departing with their varying sizes of luggage, some with a spring in their step and others looking as tired as they do in their passport photo. How many companies take time to understand the true impact of travel on their employees? I've seen and heard great examples, normally from professional services firms, where their employees are their most expensive and important asset. But even they don't take this conversation far enough (if you're reading this and you do…please tell me!).
There was a piece of excellent research by two universities in the UK and Sweden called the A darker side of hypermobility. It is a brilliant, albeit travel geek, read with the results showing three main impacts of frequent travel: physical, social and emotional. We've known the physical impact for years as we've all experienced it but to include social and emotional is breaking new ground, and makes complete sense. I've personally seen these three impacts manifest into three traveller types, do you recognise any of these?
This is where travel starts to get VERY interesting to me. Watch any HR professional sit up and take notice of a travel manager when they share these stories and ask "How can we work together to support the physical, social and emotional impacts of business travel?" It's a game changer.
3. How to get the right balance? Where to start?
Effective travel management at its most fundamental level is getting the balance between company and employee need. If you don't have a complete picture as described in section one and two, how can you know how to effectively manage both company and employee need? The easiest place to start is to open the conversation, ask questions and most importantly, listen, listen, listen! You will hear comments like:
"Our employees are adults, they can make these decisions themselves"
Yes, they are adults, but they're also employees who I see act in ways their leaders and company expect them to. If pressured to keep flying back and forth between London and Boston, most will just do it as they won't challenge for fear of negative response.
"It's not the travel team's place, your job is just to worry about the costs and service"
I'd run in the opposite direction if I heard this but not before clarifying the role of travel managers as getting the balance between company and employee need. How can you be meeting company need if you have people taking sick leave due to a long run of strenuous travel?
This article only scrapes the surface of a fascinating and far-reaching topic. I haven't even touched gender diversity issues (yes, I've heard someone say "she won't want to go on that trip as she'd rather be at home with her children" rather than asking her and letting her make her own decision!) or LGBT concerns — for example holding conferences in outwardly anti-gay countries does nothing to make your LGBT community of employees feel respected and safe.
There is also the impact on Employee Value Proposition. Do you remember that great research from Amex GBT, tClara & ARC in 2016? It found eight out of 10 frequent travellers regard travel policy as equal to as or more important than pay and benefits.
There's also need for considering what some business leaders may say is the most important topic of all: how to keep a mobile workforce productive. In most cases, employees are the most expensive asset your company has on its balance sheet, so why not treat them that way?
Addressing the impacts of travel on your employees is the first step to encouraging good travel.