When hiring an employee for a position that requires traveling regularly for business trips, you will want a candidate that will be determined when getting in touch with global partners.
The person should be decisive, smart, confident, make others feel at ease naturally, and of course love to travel.
Reasons Behind Employees Travel
Almost 36% of employees take up business traveling because it is beneficial for their careers, another 34% employees travel because they simply love it. These employees like to stay motivated and take their work on the go and they are the ones who will be regular travelers for businesses in the upcoming years too.
The rest of the employees do not prefer much traveling, or do it only for the sake of money. Their motivations for traveling and doing the job are lower, putting them at a greater risk of turnover.
What Are the Difficulties Faced While Traveling?
One of the major difficulties that employees face while traveling is being away from their families. Lack of proper diet and sleep are among the key complaints from employees and can account for 60% of the travelers.
The other biggest problem faced by employees while traveling is stress and we all know that stress is the main factor in negative employee performance.
Making the Journey Smooth and Comfortable for Traveling Employees
Being in HR of your organization, it is important to ensure that the employee traveling feels valued by rendering their experience comfortable and easy as much as possible.
Here are some ways how you can make employees stay relaxed and stress-free away from home.
1. Dedicated employees sometimes willingly give up their weekends, evenings, holidays to fulfill the company’s goals. But employees have families and so asking your employees to compromise their weekends to travel can leave a negative impact for your organization.
Create policies to promote a healthy work-life balance. Encouraging employees to turn their work phone off when they are not traveling and providing them with adequate coverage for meeting challenges that can arise as a result of the policy. There might be chances that your clients will not appreciate the policy but many of them will respect your decision to put employee mental health as a priority.
2. If you want your employees to book their own reservations, provide them with a corporate credit card to use, instead of asking them to pay for it in advance. One of the biggest frustrations for employees is to pay their travel expenses.
So, providing your employees with the freedom to choose and make purchases related to travel without withdrawing money from their personal bank accounts is the best way employers can empower their employees, while also keeping them under control with dining and lodging that fits their preferences.
3. Starting with a membership program can also provide traveling employees some additional perks that help make air travel less stressful. There are few membership programs that offer employees traveling rooms in private lounge where they can stay and relax before the flight.
At times, employees seek places to eat beyond the typical airport cuisine after their busy security check. When speaking of security, registering for TSA Precheck can cover their cost so that they can be security checked quickly and easily. Employees can skip any long lines and stop any chances of missing their flight due to unexpected traffic at the airport.
To Sum Up
Traveling is not for all employees. And when you hire the right kind of people for the job do be mindful and keep supporting them with proactive policies, you can get the most out of them, both in productivity as well as in commitment.
