Top 3 Ways to Create Expense Travel Policies to Improve Business Culture

Travel and expense management policy is a fundamental part of business culture. Your organizational values and principles determine travel policy decision making starting from choosing hotels, airlines and booking to handling corporate card spending.

While drafting an effective corporate travel policy, a travel manager has to think very carefully, do the employees need permission before making significant purchases? Can the highest level of vice presidents fly in the first class? Making such kind of decisions surely reflects the business culture and a meaningful travel policy can help to decide whether employees are traveling to see corporate travel as a punishment or a benefit.

Today, managers focus on drafting an effective travel policy that will save money, satisfy employees significantly, and improve the overall company culture. Integrating updated travel tools, managers can provide great corporate travel experiences that employees enjoy.

Here, we present some key strategies to prioritize organizational culture while considering your company’s travel policy.

1. Leveraging an Automated Expense Management Software

The major downfall of corporate travel is the insecurity employee’s face during reimbursement. A traveling employee spending personal money on expenses should expect a return of the payment made with minimum processing effort and faster turnaround. A study shows that manual expense management processes are incredibly time-consuming and highly expensive with high error rates.

Losing receipts is one of the major pain points for employees traveling during expense reporting. An automated travel and expense management software helps employees submit receipts for the approval process by merely uploading photos from any smart device. Using the receipt capture service, travel managers can receive granular insights on business expenses in real-time. Few travel management solutions free up the employees traveling from administrative work by automating the travel expense reporting process completely.

2. Use the Mobile App

A travel policy must be easy to access and user-friendly. So, the best way to help employees traveling follow reimbursement and booking procedures is to make the travel policy available at their fingertips. Today, travelers are relying on their phones and tablets rather than their laptops for making travel bookings.

Manual travel policies get lost or misplaced inside your drawers. But a new travel policy should be easy to search from a mobile device or tablets. So, when your employees are traveling to meet with clients, they do not have to open their laptop to book tickets. Switching to a travel policy from your desk drawer to traveler’s fingertips will enhance policy awareness as well as satisfaction.

3. Reward Employee for Saving

Incentives along with rewards are the best way to improve business culture and employee satisfaction. An effective expense management platform uses an algorithm and customized budgets for employees on every corporate trip. When the employees save expenses, it is likely that their economic interests get aligned with the monetary benefits of your organization as they take the initiative to save the company money.

The Bottom Line

Organizations must provide a seamless experience for the employees traveling across the globe to meet with new clients, attend business conferences, or check on project assignments. By automating travel and expense policies, organizations can ensure their travelers are adhering to various allowances for hotel stays, food, and other expenses.

Creating a transparent and straightforward travel policy makes employees satisfied. Also, a hassle-free expense management process minimizes stress and allows travelers to focus on the primary objective of their business trip.