As we continue to evolve the way we source and manage travel, the purpose of policy subtly shifts from a static, policing mechanism to a more strategic instrument through which to drive behavioural change, reduce cost and unlock value.
Here ACTEdirector Caroline Allen distills some of the key points raised at our two recent BBT-ACTE Forums, into these top tips for your travel policy:
1. Define the primary purpose to suit your company culture: Drive down cost? Focus on Duty of Care? Enable your travellers to perform at optimal levels?
2. Involve other stakeholders. Understand other function priorities to determine whether engaging them can help achieve broader overall company objectives. (HR; Shared Services; Security; Finance; Procurement, and IT i.e. to attract and retain talent; protect employees and travel-related data; leverage meetings and events spend and mobile requirements).
3. Be inventive with what you measure. If you can show your Board the money trail you will increase your personal value to your organisation. Travel data is a rich source of information, you just need to work out where the gold is to mine it creatively.
4. Measure the ROI of your policy and programme. To evidence the worth of your function, prove that the savings you achieve across your entire travel programme are greater than the cost you incur to operate it.
5. Focus on Total Trip Cost. Investigate expense claims to find big ticket items. You may find millions of dollars of T&E spend with suppliers that you have no agreements with and that don’t even merit a passing reference in your travel policy (e.g taxi firms an F&B providers).
6. Don’t ‘over-manage’ it. If compliance can drive savings, the policy needs to make sense. Dig below the surface to understand out-of-policy behaviour. Sometimes non-compliant choices can work out cheaper when you look at the total cost (room rate, flight inclusions, add-ons, meal costs, taxis, security, convenience, time and cost to get from A to B). A compliant hotel may be a few dollars cheaper but may be a taxi ride from where the traveller needs to be, with an alternative option within walking distance.
7. Be traveller centric. Put yourself in your travellers shoes to understand why some continually go ‘off-piste’. Understand what’s important to your road warriors to help them perform better. It’ll enable you to work out if you need to change the behaviour of your travellers or whether to change what is in your policy. The policy itself should be user friendly – for example, not 50 pages long!
8. Communicate it! Be creative to engage people. Consider an animated short video, infographics or images of influencers to articulate policy, booking channels and the ‘why’.
9. Gamification. Creating competition and showcasing what good likes like can increase compliance.
10. And remember your obligations to each other. While the company has a duty of care to staff, employees have a responsibility to follow a code of conduct to make the best choices for their employers.
Read the report from the latest ACTE/BBT Forums from London and Dublin