How to improve business travel policy compliance
Published: November 4, 2024
A strong business travel policy should be an effective tool for helping you keep your travel budget in line, reduce compliance risks, and ensure a streamlined process for bookings and expense management. But the policy can only achieve those things if employees actually follow it.
Business travel policy compliance is an important goal for businesses to work toward. To keep your company’s business travel running smoothly, consider how best to encourage adherence to your business travel policy.
The meaning of compliance in business travel
Business travel compliance is when employees follow the guidelines laid out in your business travel policy. The term can also apply to ensuring compliance with all applicable laws (which a good travel policy can help cover).
A few types of business travel compliance
Corporate travel compliance can include ensuring that your business achieves:
Tax compliance: Your business must make sure to accurately report all travel expenses and pay all required taxes and Social Security fees associated with business travel in order to avoid penalties and optimize tax benefits.
Immigration compliance: International business travel often comes with work permit and visa requirements. Your travel policy should consider the steps required to make sure employees can legally travel to the places you send them.
Duty of care: Travel always involves a certain amount of risk. When employees travel for business, your company has a responsibility to take the steps you can to protect the health and safety of your employees. You also must have a plan in place for addressing any emergency situations that may arise.
When to review and update your policy
Having a clear, reasonable travel policy is an important component in achieving corporate travel compliance. A policy that is outdated or sets unrealistic expectations will inevitably lead to compliance issues. If your employees are struggling to adhere to your current policy, consider whether it’s time to update it.
Some common signs that it’s time to revise your business travel policy:
- There has been a major shift in the company’s size, organizational structure, or business strategy
- Your compliance rates are low, and your efforts to raise them aren’t yielding results
- You’re frequently hearing negative employee feedback about the policy and/or find that well-meaning employees are confused by it
- Employees have trouble tracking finances and following the current processes effectively
- The budgets and cost limits you set for routes and accommodations are no longer current; with the recent rates of inflation, travel prices set even a couple of years ago could be unrealistic today
Even if none of these issues is relevant, it’s smart to make a habit out of reviewing your travel policy every year and updating it as needed.
Understanding the challenges of policy compliance
Maintaining corporate travel compliance can be challenging for a few main reasons:
Employees don’t know about the policy. Employees can’t adhere to a business travel policy if they don’t know about it. Ignorance is a common and predictable reason that some employees fail to comply.
Employees don’t understand the policy. If a policy is complex and confusing, even well-meaning employees may have a hard time following all the guidelines.
Employees struggle to find options within the allowed budget. Setting maximum allowable amounts for bookings and accommodations is smart from a budget perspective, but it can sometimes fail to account for special cases or price increases. For instance, employees traveling to an expensive destination or those needing to book last-minute travel may struggle to find choices that meet the stated requirements.
Employees find your software or processes difficult. Many businesses require employees to use specific software tools for bookings and expense management, with clearly defined processes for travel planning and reimbursement. If employees find your software unintuitive or your processes tedious, they’re unlikely to consistently use them.
Employees disagree with aspects of your policy. If employees find your policies too rigid, limiting, or difficult, they may choose not to follow them. And in some cases, they may have a point. For example, if you require employees to book with a certain airline, but the only flight to their destination involves a 10-hour layover, that puts them in an unreasonable position. Building room into your policy for exceptions and special cases can help avoid this.
Your enforcement options are limited. If travel managers lack the means to enforce the travel policy, convincing people to adhere to the stated guidelines will be an uphill battle. You need a way to get stakeholders on board with helping you hold employees accountable for a lack of compliance.
Strategies for how to improve compliance
Many of the common compliance problems are solvable with the right approach. Below are a few steps you can take to improve adherence to your business travel policy.
Commit to clear communication. Educate your employees about the travel policy. Make sure it’s a standard part of the training process for new hires. Alert all employees to any updates or changes in the policy. And make it easy for employees to find and consult the policy anytime they need a reminder. If they only get an email about it once, they’ll quickly forget. Make sure they know where to find a current copy of it each time they have a new trip to plan.
Use intuitive monitoring and reporting tools. The right tech can make many aspects of compliance easier for all involved. Having intuitive tools for bookings, expense reporting, and travel monitoring can help travelers and admins alike stay in the loop and maintain compliance throughout the travel process.
Implement incentives and penalties. Enforcement can be about encouragement as much as punishment. Make the case for implementing a system of rewards for compliance and penalties for noncompliance. For example, employees with a strong compliance record may earn upgrades every few trips, while those who don’t follow the rules may face denials for future trips or reimbursements.
Invest in regular training. Educating employees about your travel policy isn’t a one-time job. Look for ways to continually remind them about the policy and how to adhere to it. That may include annual mandatory workshops and regular email reminders for everyone, plus occasional requests for managers to reiterate the policy’s importance in their team communications.
Be open to feedback. The best policy is one that works for individual employees and for the business as a whole. You don’t want your policy to be contentious. Let employees know you’re open to suggestions. If they find the reimbursement process needlessly tedious or booking options too limited, listen to them and consider what updates you can reasonably make.
Update your policy regularly. A good travel policy should be a living document that changes according to the travel trends of the moment, the needs of the business, and the preferences of employees. Revisit and update yours regularly.
Improve the business travel experience with Uber for Business
One of the best steps you can take to improve business travel policy compliance is investing in tools that make compliance easy. With the right technology, you can:
- Provide a central platform for travel management and expense tracking
- Control costs by setting spending parameters within the tool employees use to book their travel
- Automate the expense tracking process
- Give employees the option for travel upgrades to create a better business travel experience for them
For your ground transportation bookings, the Uber for Business platform offers all the top features you need to make business travel easier and better for all involved—from the planning stage to the travel itself to the expense tracking required after. Plus, Uber for Business integrates seamlessly with many of the major expense platforms to further simplify reporting, and it offers key safety features to help you ensure duty of care compliance. Get started today.
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