Travel managers have always been vagabonds in the corporate ecosystem. As a small, yet busy company department, their goal has historically been to get travellers safely from A to B while spending the least amount of money. It therefore made sense that this business objective was overseen by procurement or finance. Travel was and still is considered a spend "category" in procurement definitions.
In the past five years, however, this simple goal has become increasingly complicated. Employee attitudes have shifted, technology has changed and the very nature of how we do business has transformed.
Employee happiness is now a company selling point
2017 research from Deloitte revealed that 83% of company executives believe that talent acquisition and retention is important or very important.
The millennial workforce are famous, or rather infamous, for job-hopping more than previous generations in order to increase their own career prospects and job happiness.
Companies are now marketing and selling job positions almost as much as they are marketing their companies' end product or service. Similarly, they want to retain employees almost as much as they wish to retain customers. In today's market, talent equals financial value.
In order to attract and retain the best talent, companies need to ensure their working environment is better than that of their competitors.
Cue the rise of "human capital development" where employees are viewed as valuable assets with quantifiable value that can be increased through specific and measurable management techniques and human capital development solutions. While management has historically centred around boosting productivity, work culture and employee development now have seats at the table in overall company strategy.
What does employee satisfaction have to do with travel?
Increased mobility of the workforce makes travel play a larger role in company culture and the overall employee experience
Firstly, we cannot deny how much company travel has increased in the past five years and how much it will continue to increase from here on out. According to Deloitte's industry research, business travel spend is expected to grow by 6% between 2018 and 2019 alone and is projected to reach $1.7 trillion dollars by 2022. This continuous rise in business travel spend is not surprising. As technology improves our ability to communicate with our employees in remote locations, business models like consultancies have been on the rise, remote working is commonplace and, as a result, companies have a diaspora of clients and employees in different locations across the globe.
As employees no longer spend most of their time in the office, the way we think about promoting company culture is expanding. Culture exists when employees work from home, within internal company communication apps like Yammer and Slack and, yes, when they are on the road as well. For many of the modern workforce, the traveller experience dictates how employees feel for a good portion of their working hours.
We can see why providing a quality traveller experience serves the greater company goals of attracting and retaining the best talent.
Improved data management makes it possible to measure travel as an investment
The disparate nature of travel data has made the act of capturing 100% of the cost a challenging process. As machine learning, software development and data management spheres develop and improve, tracking travel data is becoming easier. Added to this is the proliferation of big data in almost every company department. Sales executives track their sales activity via a CRM and project managers and team leaders are now using data in project management tools to measure productivity.
Although this is all beneficial, the real game changer is that API technology is making it easier to connect these systems — and the data held in them — much more than before.
Travel data, CRM data and/or project management tool data can now be linked together intelligently. This allows us to connect the cost to the measured value of company travel, whether it be sales deals closed or an increase in productivity.
Imagine walking into a stakeholder meeting with the measured ROI of travel and not just the cost of it? Asking for travel programme upgrades will be easier when we are able to show the value and not just cost.
Company siloes break down
In the past few years, strategic meetings management (SMM) has attempted to link siloed company departments together to serve a common purpose.
Meetings often have transient activity around them resulting in travel managers using the same suppliers and catering for the same employees as meetings managers. SMM has bought travel and meetings together, realising that it makes no sense for two departments in a company to be doing the exact same thing with the same components and no co-ordination.
This is one example of where a strong correlation has existed between two company departments resulting in a commonplace company practice being reinvented. Knowing this, it is not a massive stretch to imagine a change in the place travel management takes up in the corporate hierarchy and what goals it is centred around.
Company culture moves centre stage
As staff happiness becomes more commercially valuable, company culture becomes important. What used to happen naturally when a few people work together is now considered a top goal and priority for any business. A company goal needs a strategy and staff to support it.
HR is the first call. Instead of heading up payroll, benefits and employment, HR now has a more strategic aim of staff development, culture champion and human capital planning. They are charged with not only hiring and paying talent, but with keeping them happy and growing them professionally.
Travel managers are also embracing different priorities. First coined in Barclaycard and Festive Road's 2016 Best Practice guide, the person-centric travel management approach puts people at the heart of the travel programme's objectives. Instead of managing the programme from a cost-centric point of view, the programme is centred around keeping the travellers happy. Travellers are also employees and who is responsible for keeping employees happy?
Travel managers are, essentially people managers and have more in common with HR than we think
When HR and recruitment specialists hire new people, they are, in some way, controlling how much money a company spends on talent. I'm sure most would agree that the amount of money spent on salaries is infinitely more than travel. If HR spends this large amount of money, why do they not report to finance or procurement?
This is because hiring good quality talent that can be retained is ultimately regarded as more important than minimising the money that changes hands.
Not to mention, there are other factors such as legal considerations, risk and tax laws that hiring managers and HR specialists must consider. Does this sound familiar? Duty of care is not a unique responsibility belonging to just the travel department. HR managers are experts at analysing risk and looking after employees. They are also experts in creating an employee policy with which both senior managers and the employees following it are happy.
Companies look at the value beyond the cost of hiring and HR. Currently, and in the next few years, we hope to see the same mentality develop for business travel and, as a result, maybe travel should find a new home closer to the HR department.
As travel becomes a bigger part of work, the value of travel becomes more tangible and a higher price is placed on staff happiness, a re-organisation of the corporate hierarchy seems not just plausible but necessary.
When a restaurant makes a meal, there are various activities that go into it. Firstly, we need to buy the ingredients, the kitchen needs the right equipment and correct hygiene standards, we need to clean and prepare the ingredients and lastly, the actual meal needs to be cooked. All these activities are very different, but they all serve a singular goal: to prepare a meal that customers enjoy at a price they are willing to pay.
At a restaurant, who gets final sign off on the meal being served? Is it the manager on call, the head chef or is it the restaurant's finance department? The sign off depends on the restaurant's priorities and goals. If the goal is serving good food, the head chef should have the final say. If it is cutting costs, finance plays a larger role.
In travel, your programme is the final meal being served. If you want the programme to be one that employees enjoy, maybe the department in charge of their happiness should sign off on it.