BACK IN THE 1960s, life at Bancroft’s School was dominated by rules. Boys had to ask permission to take a bath more than twice a week. Dormitory lights went out at 9pm. Walking on the quadrangle lawns was strictly verboten, and running in corridors wasn’t quite a capital offence, but not far off.
School caps were not worn on school premises, but were compulsory off-site. All pubs were strictly out of bounds. The penalties for contravention were, by today’s namby-pamby Guardian-reading liberal standards, harsh. Corporal punishment was the norm – two strokes of the cane for talking after lights-out and other minor infringements, four for repeat offences, and six for smoking.
So guess what we did? We infested the local pubs, cap-free, wasting our termly allowances on halves of Double Diamond we didn’t really want. We sneaked out of dormitories at unearthly hours just to walk on the quadrangle lawns. The really daring actually smoked while doing so.
Of course, those in authority knew precisely what we were doing. For the most part, they turned a blind eye, grateful that – as far as they knew – we weren’t dropping acid or getting off with the girls from Woodford County High. They knew, as did we, that the rules were there to be broken.
You will obey...please
The word ‘mandation’ – if it is a word, which is in itself questionable, popularised as it was by Sarah Palin – not only didn’t exist then, it didn’t work either. And the corporate travel industry appears, at long last, to have woken up to that fact. Tell people what to do, and there will always be a maverick contingent who will deliberately disobey; ask people to do something – and explain the reasons for the request – and, by and large, they’ll comply. Tablets-of-stone travel policy edicts have mercifully matured into ‘guidelines’, allowing so-called rogue travellers to exert their individuality without thwarting company compliance goals.
American Express Business Travel vice-president Anthony Drury sums it up perfectly. “We are living in a time where technology is empowering travellers, so companies need to win employees’ hearts and minds to achieve policy compliance,” he says. “Communication is key to success. Companies need to communicate better why their travel policies exist and how employees themselves benefit from them.”
He says traditional top-down policy compliance needs to evolve into a more flexible system where the traveller is trusted to make cost-effective decisions that benefit the company as well as the individual. “Companies need to give employees more choice – perhaps allowing for travel options that are convenient for the traveller and not merely the cheapest available,” he says. “For example, to get to an important overseas meeting, an employee could be given the option of flying out business class so they are well-rested , then returning in economy.”
Another knows best
There appear to be two main drivers behind this change of heart. First, there is the reluctant admission that, given the advances in internet and mobile technology, travellers (who are on the road, gaining first-hand experience) probably do know more than their travel managers (stuck in an office, with relatively little coal-face experience) and – crucially – they can now share that knowledge. That same technology, and travellers’ increasing familiarity with it, makes hard-and-fast policy difficult to enforce, and nigh-on impossible to justify.
Second, there is a long-overdue recognition of the fact that business travellers, by and large, have the best interests of their employers at heart. As a consequence, the happy traveller is – almost by definition – the more productive traveller.
“With modern technology, people don’t want to spend time going back and forth to management for approvals, they want to get on and do it themselves,” says Jackie Lacey, managing director of Chelsea Travel Management. “What I am seeing is systems being introduced that give the control back to the budget holder, and to the travellers themselves. It’s rather like the old per-diem system, but with technology built around it. Companies do seem to be taking a more flexible approach, and maybe that’s because they can no longer effectively police hardline policies.”
And do they need to? So he spent £50 extra, out of policy – did he (or she) land the contract? Was that contract worth more than £50? If so, what are you worried about? If he wants to run in the corridor, and doesn’t hurt anyone in the process, why penalise him? He’s walked on the grass for no good reason – yes, it’s against the rules, but so what?
Mobile mavericks
“Mobile technologies are putting power into the hands of the traveller, driving the need for a more flexible approach to policy enforcement,” says Amex’s Drury. “Whether it’s using an app to find a hotel or to receive an alert highlighting a last-minute travel change, mobile technologies have quickly infiltrated almost every aspect of our personal lives. Now these services and technologies are filtering across to corporate travel. The number of travel bookings and other travel and expense management tasks carried out through mobile devices may once have been small, but are now increasing.”
Drury says corporate travel departments and their suppliers are continuing to focus on duty of care, which is one of the strongest reasons for compliance. “Booking through preferred means, or following corporate booking policy, helps to provide companies with the data they need to help a traveller,” he says.
But if employees go rogue and book independently, travel management companies (TMCs ) don’t have visibility on travel plans and, therefore, can’t provide duty-of-care support. “By making travel policies flexible and more user-friendly, employees are more likely to remain compliant, saving companies time and money in the long run,” Drury argues.
That last bit is important. Maverick travellers need to understand that they can go off-piste, but that when they do so, they drop off the corporate travel radar. Policy can – arguably should – be flexible, but travellers need to be aware of the potential risks.
Rather worryingly, the latest Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) study – Travel Policy Trends: ‘Control’ – What Does it Mean and Who Has It? – reveals that while 65 per cent of travel managers stay in touch with their charges via mobile phones and social media, only 18 per cent use the same systems to communicate and reinforce policy recommendations.
The study, based on a poll of nearly 1,500 travel managers and buyers from the Americas, Europe and Asia, also reveals 45 per cent of those polled say their travellers use their mobiles to source travel information, so it’s not as if policy reminders wouldn’t get through.
Regulate or Educate?
And travel managers certainly have the authority at least to impart their rules and regulations – 60 per cent of the GBTA’s survey sample claim they now have more control over their companies’ travel policies than they did a few years ago.
They also have a far clearer picture of travel trends and patterns, with 72 per cent claiming to have more travel spend data and improved reporting tools than ever, providing more information to find gaps in compliance and bolster their ability to negotiate with suppliers.
In particular, says the GBTA, online booking tools have been a real boon to travel policy improvements, with three in every four travellers using them to book their business trips. However, as with mobile phones and social media, barely half (54 per cent) of all travel professionals are actually integrating more information into online booking tools to educate road warriors about staying within policy. “The compliance rate of travellers using approved corporate booking channels is 79 per cent, indicating that technology has become an essential tool to create and implement effective policy,” the GBTA report says.
Communication is key, as Drury says, particularly if companies are taking a more lenient approach to travel – the greater the leeway, the greater the margin for error or abuse.
HRG director Susan Lancaster is convinced that liberalism – as opposed to liberality – is already gaining traction. “If I look at the customers we work with, I would say very few of them have ever mandated – in fact, quite the opposite. There is a policy in place, but when it comes to actual enforcement, it’s more about communication – a huge amount of effort is put into communicating those policies.
“When it comes to an out-of-policy exception, of course we report on that, but there are very few organisations that tell us we must not ticket the trip – in fact, I don’t know of a single one. Where there has been a breach, they will send out reminder notes, but do they still pay their employees’ expenses? Yes they do.”
There are those who take a tougher line, but Lancaster argues that these days they do so primarily in the interests of travellers’ welfare, rather than in the interests of cost control. Never mind the air fare, has the employee had the requisite jabs?
At the same time, as companies expand into emerging markets, travellers are having to clear very different hurdles, and need to have the freedom to do so. For example, policy may insist they use local taxis or even public transport between airport and hotel, but there are plenty of destinations where it is advisable to pre-book chauffeur-driven cars, with a pre-booked and named driver.
And travellers themselves have become much more aware of the security implications of going off-policy. While September sees the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities, the Icelandic ash-cloud has perhaps done more to drive home the message that “if we don’t know where you are, we can’t help”.
“If we hadn’t had the amount of security issues that we had over the past few years, we could be having more problems than we are,” says Lancaster. “If they do take the decision to go outside the programme, then inevitably the big question is going to be about security. Pre-trip approval is as much about gaining control from a security point of view as anything else.”
Maybe that’s why, all those years ago, we weren’t allowed to walk on the quadrangle lawns...
TRAVEL BUYERS’ VIEWS
"We don’t use words like ‘mandate’, but have an expense challenge in place for business travel to stop people booking outside our preferred booking channels. Once we’d sorted the compliance issue, we could then tweak behaviour so, if people want to travel in a higher cabin class or on non-billable travel, they must achieve senior management sign-off before the ticket is issued."
Travel manager, financial sector
"Travel policy is constantly reviewed to ensure it is always relevant to business needs and to ensure it caters for regional and local nuances. Historically, it is fair to say that behaviour drove policy, but over the past two years we have actively sought to create policy that drives the required behaviour, through the launch of a single global cross-divisional travel policy. The word ‘mandate’ in our environment is used loosely, although we do have a clear exception-approval process to cater for required out-of-policy travel. Such activity is also brought to light to senior management through pre/post-trip reporting.”
Travel manager, banking sector