Survey of Corporate Travel Managers by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) revealed that 72% of Corporate Travel Managers have not accomplished their desired travel policy compliance level yet. If compliance is the main goal for the organization as well as corporate traveler security, it’s important to think about strategies for enhancing adherence to the policy.
Having Business Travel Policies are a necessary mandate since they enable the business to control the expenses of sending employees on business trips, and they allow organizations to have some control over the employee’s travel experience and security. While there are many possible ways of drafting travel strategies and people who implement them, organizations confront challenges when employees overlook business travel policies. Quite often, the reasons why employees overlook policies are because they are trying to find other ways to book cheaper tickets, or they are not completely aware of the organization’s policies, or they choose to ignore the organization’s travel policy mandate. Below are some of the most effective ways to manage the policy compliance:
1. Factor in employee satisfaction
Frequently, company savings take a precedent over traveler satisfaction. One way organizations can enhance policy is by focusing more on improving the booking and travel experience for employees. In reality, the majority of them agree that improving traveler’s behavior does not really correlate with higher travel costs.
2. Get innovative
A few associations are becoming more innovative in their ways to deal with compliance. Gamification could be a fun and inexpensive way to incentivize the business traveler to utilize the selected corporate booking tool and book in-channel. For this, TrackMyTkt seems like the best choice when it comes to dynamically track flight prices in real time from the time of booking until the departure and help corporates re-book the tickets when viable savings are identified on the same or similar flight. In this way, corporate end up saving millions of rupees in business travel.
3. Instruct employees on duty of care
It’s a type in the managed travel world that travel strategies should address the duty of care—an organization’s commitments to protect business traveler from harm while traveling. Various organizations deal with the duty of care in many different ways. Numerous TMCs have made strides in technological advancements that enable real-time access to traveler’s whereabouts, yet again this is just when travelers utilize the technology. On top of this, other measures include assessing risk prior to the business trip, informing travelers of potential risks and having a crisis management plan in place.
4. Make sure policies are updated and simple to understand
One crucial part of communication is ensuring that travel policies can be easily accessed which is more likely to happen when the business traveler is sensitized to the travel policy. It is recommended that the line manager or owners are accountable for travel policy compliance as they can easily administer it as well.
5. Take advantage of the technologies
Today, technology can play a very important role in managing the spectrum of travel related services. Many TMCs have web-based booking tools, which allows tracking of costs in the form of expense audit. Also, AIl in the coming days will assist companies in travel compliance.
