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Compliance BUYER’SVIEW
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
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
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
Policy can – arguably should – be flexible, but travellers need to be aware of the potential risks
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... ■
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