Travel savings incentives.

[RichardG]

Hi everyone,

As pressures grow on our corporate travel budgets year on year I would love to get your ideas on the types of non-monetary incentives that your organisation could offer that would influence your travellers to book a flight or hotel at a class or rate below their actual agreed entitlement. (i.e instead of a model where the cash savings are split between the organisation and the traveller).  This is not a trick question and responses will not be judged - this is something I am very interested in learning more about and as always your feedback is greatly appreciated!

Kind regards

[dworth]

My 2 cents....

When you say agreed upon.. I presume you mean contractually.  If that is the case, can you ammend the agreement? 

If not, is it an option to "split" the savings?  That would seem like a reasonable midpoint.  ie. IF the person can book a hotel at 300 per night and decides to go with a 200 per night hotel, then the company saves 50 per night and then pays 50 to the traveller.  The traveller can opt in or not depending on what they want to do.

Another option may be to restrict where they can book if you have agreements for preferred rates with specific vendors.

[dworth]

LOL... just saw NON-Monetary.   Sigh....   could you formulate a process for PTO as a value on $$$ saved in travel?

[RichardG]

Maybe there isn't a Non-monetary solution for business travel incentives and as such you're answering my question. - the reason for my question is that some employee cohorts could never accept the "cash saved share schemes" (ie Government employees)  doing the rounds today - so was trying to come up with viable alternatives.  

Thanks for responding!

Kind regards

[RichardG]

Hi @dworth - I was always told if can't sell something then you're only other option is to mandate it.  Yes we do have an organization wide agreement on employee travel entitlements and that would have to be changed as part of a new overall employee agreement - the bargaining process is very consultative involving employees, unions and other stakeholders and can take up to 12 months - and that doesn't even guarantee it will be voted up.  

If I was in the private sector, I'd jump on the cash or voucher split options to induce savings - but if I did that in the public sector, the media would have a field day - gaining personal benefit from the taxpayers dollar.

Thanks again for your input!

Kind regards

[dworth · Accepted solution]

As you stated, I come from the private sector.... but conceptually, even in a government or bargaining position, it ends up being this:

Budget = $XXX

$Amount we can spend <= Budget

So... if presented as "we need to work together to keep the Budget in balance so we can all do the items we planned on doing this year", we need to keep travel costs down.  ie. 100 people can go on a trip for this year or we can cut costs per trip and 120 can go.

Perhaps I am a bit naive, but I would rather go on a trip for business than not be able to go.  Maybe the better secondary question is "Do you enforce the Budget?"  If people start getting travel rejected, I bet they will be more likely to work with you.

For Government employees getting a "bonus" for saving taxpayers $$$.  I am actually OK with that.  If they did that here, as a voter, if I heard that say... Office of Personnel Management budgeted $100 million for travel, then implemented some internal changes and only spent $90 million while providing $5 million as a bonus for employees who REDUCED the spending, it is still a net savings of tax dollars of $5 million.

Hope that makes sense.

[RichardG]

Thanks @dworth - that made complete sense and forced me to rethink my approach within the confines of our existing policies.  Our CFO is currently able to approve benefits acquired by our employees in the course of travel.  We used to reward high performers or innovators with gift cards but that seems to have stopped - at least with rewarding travel savings there is a tangible saving that can be defended when scrutinized by the Senate or media.  I.e $500 gift card for an employee who drops back to PE from business - from Australia to the west coast of the US that fare saving could be at least $4k USD.

Cheers