Any travel manager knows that they can spend a career tinkering with their organisation’s travel policy in pursuit of perfection. However, they also know that without high rates of policy compliance, their programme can miss out on enormous cost savings and improved traveller safety, regardless of how polished their policy is. Use these strategies below to put your programme on the track towards improving travel policy compliance.
Equip
If your travellers don’t have the right tools, travel policy compliance may be harder to come by. With the latest mobile and online booking technology, your pre-trip approval process can be built in from the get-go, making it easier for employees to follow an established travel policy. Rule-based logic helps guide travellers to book the best trip for the company’s balance sheet while built-in communication tools allow travel managers to discuss trips with employees in the midst of the booking process and in turn approve, decline or hold individual purchases.
Educate
Developing a comprehensive education programme for your travel programme is every bit as important as maintaining a sound travel policy. Without the proper knowledge of travel tools and protocol, employees hardly can be expected to comply with company policy. Whether your team builds succinct guides to pass out to employees or holds regular workshops, your travel policy education programme should cover everything from your online booking tool and the pre-trip approval process to mobile apps and on-the-road expense management. This education can be built into the onboarding process for new employees and you also can hold training to rehash the importance of travel policy compliance with established employees.
Communicate
To drive travel policy compliance, programme administrators need to be transparent about the reasons changes are made to an existing travel policy whenever they are made. The imposition of new rules and practices is never likely to be exciting news for your employees. That’s why it’s critical to cut down on complacency by directly, openly and repeatedly communicating the rationale behind any changes. More importantly, this communication should stress the benefits of change in language that ties travel policy compliance to company-wide achievement.
Optimise
Achieving complete travel policy compliance might be a pipe dream, but consistent improvement—in both compliance and policy—can be your travel programme’s reality with the help of the right tools for analysis. When your employees’ decisions, from pre- to post-trip, can be recorded and viewed in one place, your ability to affect and improve future behaviour greatly increases. With a leading-edge travel analytics platform, you can use advanced business intelligence technology to travel intelligently. Use streamlined data visualisation tools to identify individual travellers to educate on the importance of travel policy compliance as well as larger trends that are adversely affecting your programme’s performance. Then use advanced projection models to predict precisely how policy changes will affect your balance sheet.
Pick the Right Partner
Ultimately, one of the most important factors in pushing travel policy compliance can be choosing the right partner. With a leading travel management company at your side, one that is dedicated to delivering advice and tools tailored to your programme’s particular needs, you can be sure that you are properly equipped to drive your business travel forward.
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