Get creative and be clear on your Travel Policy Draft
It is also important for organizations and firms to become more creative in their strategic approach to travel compliance. Gamification, like leaderboards and online badges to rank in-policy travellers, can turn out to be innovative and fun to push employees buy in the idea of using book-in channels and corporate booking tools. For example, it can involve something unique an algorithm which uses a firm’s business travel policy, real-time price data and employee parameters that enable travel search and encourage and support the full participation of travellers in decision, leading to reduced travel spends. Corporations can try out innovative means such as forming watch lists, putting new recruits on the watch list for a specified period to make them policy compliant, and later eliminating them altogether on the watch list. This will empower employees and make them fully responsible and cognizant of the policies. Other firms have toyed around the idea of providing extra time off for travel in case the employees make an economy class fight booking.
Edify employees on duty of care:
Managed travel program involving policies that address duty of care—a firm’s obligation to safeguard employees from harm and keep them safe while travelling is becoming commonplace these days. The approach to handling duty of care will differ within different organizations and corporations and even at different TMCs. Some of the best practises entail assessment of risk prior to an employee making the trip, informing him/her of associated pre-travel risks and resources, establishing a crisis management plan, tracking travelling employees throughout and confirming vendors support travel plan.
The recent global terror attacks and threats emphasise the point that travellers be aware of the resources at their disposal. Another payoff that can come out of proper communication of travel policies is that it has the potential to improve or enhance policy compliance. This is especially important in cases where employees book hotels that lie outside of the designated channel; this can make life easy for TMCs or travel managers in locating travelling employees during business trips. This is possible only when travellers use the technology that TMCs offer to locate their whereabouts. Thus traveller safety is greatly enhanced when technology is linked to duty of care.