A Corporate Travel Policy That Both Employers And Employees Will Love

Whether you are a small business owner or run an MNC, your business trips can be made more efficient and effective with a corporate travel policy.

A well-designed corporate travel policy not only helps to maintain order throughout the entire travel process, from the booking of hotels and air tickets to how employees should file their claims at the end of a trip. It also promotes compliance, saves the company money, improves travelers’ safety, and prevents fraud.

To that end, travel managers need to consider not just the needs and wants of the organization, but of its employees as well.

A Travel Manager’s Checklist

For modern-day employees, convenience is the key to business travel happiness. A recent study revealed that Asian business travelers, for instance, prioritize convenience and practicality above all. Research on US business travelers yielded similar findings.

That means today’s business travelers will likely take convenient hotel locations and flight times over breakfast buffets and business class tickets.

By considering employees’ travel needs and preferences, you can more likely produce a travel policy that boosts compliance rates. In turn, compliance will help the company reduce business travel costs and make sure employees are safe while they are traveling on business.

Further by boosting convenience and safety during the trip, you can bet that your business travelers will be able to better focus on representing your company and achieving their goals for the trip.

To make a corporate travel policy that meets both the organization’s and employees’ needs, keep in mind the following aspects:

Education

In general, employees want to adhere to policies. When they don’t, it’s often because they don't clearly understand the rules.

To improve compliance, your policy should provide a clear outline of your goals and how business trips can help achieve them.

You also need to train those who oversee the corporate travel processes, such as admin staff, to make sure they know your corporate travel policy by heart. Train them and your travelers in using your travel booking tools, too.

Clarity in Communication

Define key phrases, requirements, and rules that may confuse. If there are any penalties for non-compliance, explain these clearly.

Reduce room for error by making the reimbursement process clear, user-friendly, and easy to navigate. Finally, make sure the policy is easily accessible so that employees can refer to it at any time.

Incentivise Compliance

Think of innovative ways to make policy compliance more attractive to travelers. For instance, when employees stay at a hotel or select an airline from an approved list, they could be allowed to keep the loyalty points or credits for their personal use.

Feedback Loop

When you roll out and test your corporate travel policy, you must welcome opportunities for improvement. Make it easy for employees to provide feedback about the rules, requirements, and processes.

When you understand your employees’ experiences during business trips, you can improve their entire travel and booking experience. That can translate to a higher compliance rate, greater job and travel satisfaction, and less travel-related stress—without the need to incur additional costs. Everyone’s happy.

Duty of Care

Look into new and emerging technologies that allow you to locate employees while they are away. Make sure their contact and emergency contact details are available on your travel management platform.

Where possible, inform employees about potential risks or dangers in various locales before travel, and provide relevant information on resources and support that they can access in case of an emergency.

Staying Up-to-Date

Keep abreast of travel trends, such as bleisure travel. Understand the corporate travel preferences of millennial employees, who will make up 75% of the global workforce by 2025.

An annual review of your corporate travel policy will allow you to remove aspects that have become irrelevant or obsolete. It’s also an opportunity to refine policies as you take into account new travel trends, such as the rise of the sharing economy.

A Corporate Travel Policy Template

Here is an outline of essential items to include in corporate travel policy.

Introduction 💬

This is your opportunity to provide a brief and concise explanation about the goals of the corporate travel policy (e.g., save money, ensure traveler safety, streamline the travel booking and reimbursement process).

This is also where you explain how business trips help the company achieve its goals and mission. In this way, you’re letting your travelers know just how important their roles are.

Contents 📝

A table of contents helps readers locate the relevant sections of the corporate travel policy.

Employee Safety ⛑

Given the company’s duty of care, it’s important to:

• Remind travelers to provide emergency contacts and submit details of their itinerary before travel
• Provide information about the company’s travel insurance policy or where to access it
• Supply employees with a point of contact in case of emergency
• Explain what procedures travelers should follow in the event of an accident, emergency, or serious illness

Travel Expenses 🧳

Travel expenses include transportation, lodging, meals, and entertainment. An entertainment expense may consist of taking the client out to dinner or to a basketball game.

Be clear whether it’s mandatory to book from the list of preferred vendors or if employees should find the lowest-cost option where possible.

The various expenses can be separated into distinct categories for easier reference:

• Transportation: air and ground transport
• Accommodation
• Meals
• Mobile phone and internet
• Entertainment
• Medical
• Non-reimbursable expenses (provide examples, such as toiletries)

Air Travel - This section should answer questions like:- Do you have a preferred website or online booking tool?- When do air tickets need to be purchased before travel?- Should all airline tickets be economy class or are there situations where booking business class is an option?- Can employees use frequent flyer benefits?

Ground Transport (Personal Car, Rental Car, Rail, Cab, Ride-sharing) - Is there a preferred mode of transport? Be clear on how much flexibility employees have when choosing their transport.- Is there a maximum per diem rate?- If employees drive their car or rent one, is the cost of petrol reimbursable?- What about parking fees and tolls?

Accommodation - Should employees always book from a list of preferred vendors? If so, what if the preferred vendor is fully booked?- What types of hotel rooms are acceptable?- Is there a maximum budget per night?- If employees decide to extend their booking and/or have a family member traveling with them, what is reimbursable and what is not?- Does the accommodation need to be within a certain distance from the main area of travel, such as an exhibition center?- Are travelers free to book any accommodation as long as they stick within a given budget?- Can travelers choose Airbnb instead?

Meals - Will the company reimburse you for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?

Mobile Phone and Internet - Are mobile phone charges claimable?- Should travelers purchase local SIM cards or pocket WiFi?

Entertainment Expenses - Indicate what is considered a reasonable entertainment expense.- Specify which entertainment expenses require pre-approval and which do not.

Medical Expenses - Is a visit to the doctor claimable with a receipt?

Non-reimbursable Expenses - Identify the items that cannot be reimbursed, such as toiletries.- Explain situations when exceptions apply. For instance, if the airline loses the traveler’s luggage, he or she will have to purchase some toiletries and clothes.

Reporting and Reimbursement Procedures 🧾

This is where you can provide employees with the necessary information to apply for a refund for their travel expenses. Here are a few points to include:

• Remind travelers that they need to fill out an expense report
• Be clear about the information they need to provide—e.g. receipts, names of vendors, the purpose of the trip
• Layout deadlines for submission of reimbursement claims
• Let employees know how long Accounts takes to approve (and deny) claims
• Better yet, if you use an app or platform for digitizing receipts and automating reimbursement claims, explain the process with screenshots or a video

Others 👨🏼‍💻

Explain how employees can give feedback on the policy. State the consequences of non-compliance, if any.

Identify a good travel management platform that will allow you to streamline your corporate travel procedures and automatically apply aspects of your travel policy. With a travel policy that’s built into your travel management tool, employees will no longer need to second-guess themselves when making travel booking decisions.

With a travel management platform, you can also consolidate all the essential information on business travelers (such as their travel itinerary, contact details, and emergency contacts) to maximize traveler safety. The risk of fraudulent expense reporting will be minimized by having expense reporting built-in and configuring the various expense categories in the system, removing any ambiguity in the process.

Start writing your corporate travel policy

If you don’t have a corporate travel policy yet, or if you haven’t updated it in a while, it’s time to do so. Use this template as a starting point. Remember, make your policy clear, straightforward, visual, and understandable. Your business trips will be all the better for it.

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