Paying for Employee Travel? Offer These 4 Features to Control Travel Costs

Offering features and perks to your employees who travel for business is a great way to keep them motivated while working in the field, as well as build loyalty and trust with one another. But it's important to consider the potential costs of the features you want to offer to ensure that they don't create an unmanageable budget. Here are a few features your employees are sure to appreciate and that will help to control your company's travel costs:

Taxi Services

Covering car rentals for each business trip throughout the year can get costly, especially when you factor in gas and insurance fees. Instead of paying for personal transportation, offer your employees taxi coupons through local services like Yellow Cab to use for essential travel while they're out of town.

To determine what value the taxi coupons should have for a given employee, figure out how much travel will be needed for work while they're out of town and add a small percentage (for example ten percent) as a personal travel allowance. If your employee wants to travel more often by vehicle, they can pay for additional taxi charges or rent a car themselves.

Kitchenettes

To save you and your employee money on food expenses, establish accommodations for your traveling employees that include kitchenettes so they can be stocked for the duration of the trip. This will help to ensure that room service and restaurants can be avoided for the most part, and provide some convenience for your employees so they don't have to spend their free time searching for a meal. You can then provide a small food stipend to help employees buy groceries, and limit the company food spending account for business dinners.

Spending Vouchers

If your traveling employees often meet with clients while on the road, chances are that they are expected to take charge when it comes to entertainment during casual meetings that will hopefully result in closing a deal. But by leaving entertainment plans up to your employees, you leave your budget wide open and out of control.

So consider working with a national concierge service who can give you a list of attractions in areas where you're sending employees, and then offering your employees a choice between a list of entertainment options you provide them. You can then simply provide vouchers for the attractions, restaurants, and other amenities that are added to the itinerary.

Some Free Time

When the brain is stimulated with enjoyable activities it tends to perform better overall, which translates to improved productivity as an employee. Because of this, it's pertinent to ensure that your employees have free time while they're away on business so they can participate in activities they personally enjoy. When employees are enjoying personal time when they aren't on the clock, this can indirectly help you save some money on salaries for traveling employees.

Instead of scheduling employees for eight hours on the clock daily while they're traveling, schedule them for five or six hours during the day along with evening meetings with customers. This will give your employees plenty of time for sightseeing, relaxation, and stress management so they're more likely to make every minute they do spend working count. If it isn't possible to provide some free time to employees while they're away on business, give them a day off when they get back to recover and to save yourself a day's worth of salary.

With these features available, your employees are likely to enjoy their business trips and come back feeling refreshed, motivated, and ready to start working on the next project at hand.