managers within a company have respon- sibility for different elements of health and wellbeing. “HR, occupational health or even a wellbeing group are critical stakeholders for any travel manager,” she says. “My rec- ommendation would be to think through a number of scenarios that might happen and then write a RACI [responsible, accountable, consulted and informed] model for who’s going to do what and then test it.”
“A good start would be to identify triggers for stress levels that could have long-term health implications”
strain and keeping irregular diet, sleeping and working patterns. A good start would be to identify triggers for stress levels that could have long-term health implications and work towards improving things, par- ticularly for frequent flyers.” Toby Maguire is managing director of
Working in Balance, which runs courses to help companies reduce workplace stress. He says it’s important to encourage travellers to take responsibility for their own health – such as staying hydrated on long flights, and making the most of hotel pool and gym facilities to mitigate jetlag.
WORKING TOGETHER One of the key corporate relationships when it comes to improving health and wellbe- ing is between the travel department and human resources (HR). “It’s vital to under- stand what the company’s HR policies and key objectives are,” says one European-based travel buyer. “Companies can do a lot of preventative work to improve employees’ wellbeing. If we want to retain our staff, there needs to be flexibility from both sides. “It’s not just about booking the cheapest
airline ticket, if that’s going to be bad for the traveller and cause them lots of stress due to the timings or the routing. You might save on the airline ticket, but then the employee could be off sick because you have made them take unnecessarily long or inconvenient flights.” Festive Road’s Strachan says it is impor- tant to establish which departments and
118 BBT January/February 2017
Practical steps for buyers
FCM’S PIP ENGLISH on questions to ask and steps to take to improve the health and wellbeing element of a company’s travel policy.
• What business class policy should you implement to ensure travellers arrive rested?
• What should the company position be on employees self-driving after long-haul flights, especially when crossing time zones when jetlag is a factor that could increase the risk of an accident?
• Where do travellers go for a single source of truth on health risks and vaccination advice?
• Should extra layers of approval be built into the travel approval policy for destinations with high health risks?
• Put in place a traveller feedback mechanism and listen to traveller HSSE (health, safety, security and environment) feedback about hotels that are included in the travel programme.
MEASURING SUCCESS As with many elements of business travel that go beyond the purely financial, it is undoubtedly difficult to put hard figures or calculate a credible return-on-investment for a company of having a proactive policy towards employee health and wellbeing. How can this be measured? One of the pioneers in this field is con-
sultant Scott Gillespie, from T Clara, who has developed the concept of ‘trip friction’, which aggregates data to assess the impact of regular ‘poor quality’ travel. Meanwhile London-based wellbeing
science and technology firm Iamyiam is offering a platform for companies that enables employees to check their state of wellbeing via an analysis of their DNA, and this information is then used to create a personalised activity and nutrition plan. Experts in the field believe that the most important first step is for companies to take wellness seriously across their entire range of business activities and within their overall corporate culture, which will be reflected both in their offices and the way they organise and buy travel. Matt Morley, founder of ‘green gym’
Biofit, which emphasises a more natural approach to exercise over the use of complex equipment, says: “Arguably the biggest endorsement so far of this approach to workplace wellness is that tech giants such as Apple, Amazon, Google and Face- book are all designing nature-inspired, eco-friendly headquarters for themselves to first attract the world’s top talent, then retain them and, in the process, extract maximum value from their time by offer- ing them a stimulating, positive environ- ment in which to work.” While so far the evidence as to how im- proving travellers’ health and wellbeing increases performance and productivity may be largely anecdotal, there seems little doubt that the advance of technology and science will make it a subject increasingly hard to ignore. In a business sense, it will surely soon become what the Americans like to call a ‘no brainer’.
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
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