Keeping Employees Happy: Reimagine Compliance in Your Business Travel Policy Programme

Corporate travel policies don’t exist purely to keep businesses happy – they’re there to improve the business travel experience for employees too. But unfortunately, your staff won’t always see it that way.

Strict rules and penalties for not adhering to business travel policies can create resentment amongst staff, and (ironically) this will often result in non-compliance.

So how do you get your employees to respect your business travel policy without being micromanaged? Increasing employee buy-in for travel policies isn’t hard if you take the right approach. And how do you know what the ‘right’ approach is? By asking your staff what they want.

In partnership with YouGov, FREENOW surveyed 3,666 European business travellers to learn more about their corporate travel policies. This allowed us to gather solid data on how you could improve employee engagement and compliance in your travel programs. Here’s what we found out.

What hinders employee travel policy compliance?

The survey data revealed three main obstacles that prevent employees from following corporate travel policies: awareness, convenience and motivation.

Of those employees we surveyed, as much as 14% said their travel policy was unclear, 5% said they’d never seen their travel policy before and 9% said their company didn’t have one. If your employees don’t have complete clarity on your corporate travel policy, how are they going to comply?

If your policy heavily inconveniences staff in some way (for example, you don’t cover a broad enough range of mobility options) it’s likely they’ll risk non-compliance. This is why convenience is so important – your policy should try to improve the business travel experience for your employees, not make their journeys harder.

And finally, if there are no incentives that reward employees for respecting your travel policy, it’s likely you’ll see little engagement. Why would your staff go out of their way to comply to your business travel policy if there’s no

employee motivation to do so?

How to improve business travel compliance amongst your employees

Improving your employee business travel policy adherence relies heavily on building trust and open conversation. By understanding your employees’ needs, you can create a business travel policy they actually want to follow.

In our survey, we asked European business travellers what sort of incentives would motivate them to buy into their company’s travel policy. Find out what they told us – and see our tips on how to foster responsible travel behaviour among your staff – by downloading the eBook below.