*GUEST BLOG* Top 5 ways to deal with business travel stress

Business travel can be stressful. One of the ways to monitor the travel worries of employees is through regular surveys about their views of business travel. In a recent survey, over 100 points of potential anxiety for travellers was identified, ranging from planning a trip, not knowing the location well, delays, cancellations, language and culture to home-related stresses including childcare, pet cover and personal social commitments.

To achieve a less stressful travel experience, travellers are encouraged to embrace ‘Smarter working’ – a unique approach to booking and travelling.  

Matthew Holman, Head of Traveller Wellbeing at Capita Travel and Events, shares his top five tips to dealing with business travel stress:

1)     Book Smarter

Changes to the way we plan travel and book, such as advance booking as well as integrated itinerary information, a traveller can prepare mentally for it.   When changes happen during the trip, travellers benefit from our support and our technology, which has been developed to provide relevant and timely communications to help them.  After the trip, we encourage the traveller to take time to recover and prepare for their next activities.

2)     Sleep is key

When travellers fly long-haul, their circadian rhythm is disrupted.  On average, it takes one day for each one-hour time zone change to reset your circadian rhythm to its home settings. We encourage travellers to sleep well and avoid stimulants, such as caffeine after lunch or alcohol in the evening.  

3)     Educate on coping strategies?

One of the best coping strategies I recommend for travellers is to practice mindfulness and breathing exercises.  When travelling, try to stay connected with home and your normal routines.  If you use the gym at home, make sure to pack your kit so you use the gym when travelling.

4)     Understanding of individuals’ needs

Managers need to seek deeper and more-connected relationships with their employees. They should focus on understanding what the challenges are for the individuals and, where they see something that they are worried about, they should be open to having a discussion to understand the employee’s issues.  The best leaders are the ones who show their employees empathy and compassion.  Simple steps, such as making sure travellers are fit to travel before their trip, making sure the traveller has downtime when they travel and are allowed the time to recover make a difference.

5)     Not travel

It may sound obvious, but travellers should really question whether they need to travel in the first instance. Is the trip necessary and how can it be as efficient and effective as possible?  Is there an alternative to being their physically? Employees should look attending meetings via video call or conference call. 

We have hosted numerous ‘Smarter working’ workshops with customers and our own travellers, as well as steering groups with suppliers so we can enhance the overall traveller experience and continue to improve traveller wellbeing. If you are interested in finding out more about Smarter working and want to speak to our wellbeing experts, Matthew will be on our stand (B140) at various times throughout the show. If you want to book a specific appointment, please contact Matthew.Holman@capita.com

This blog was posted by Matthew Holman, Head of Traveller Wellbeing at Capita Travel and Events, who are exhibiting on stand B140 at the Business Travel Show over 26 – 27 February. Register for a FREE visitor pass now www.businesstravelshow.com

*GUEST BLOG* Data insights and how to use them

Many organisations don’t know precisely how much they spend on meetings. As they start the journey towards implementing a Strategic Meetings Management programme a good starting point is getting an idea of where meeting spend is going. If you don’t have a consolidated data view through your current supplier, consider these different sources and how they can help you fill some of the gaps.

1. General Ledger

Engagement with your Finance Team to understand what is being processed through the General Ledger is a good starting point – they should be able to provide some level of data based on supplier coding that incorporates things like hotel, leisure suppliers, restaurants and venues. It will give you a top-level view of the potential spend as well as which suppliers are being used and also identify the internal cost centres or departments spending the money.

2. Expenses data

Expenses data is another good source. As long as you consider that the average cost of a meeting is likely £200+ by focusing on expense claims above that level you can quickly get an overview of the potential spend levels, which suppliers are being used and which cost centres or departments are generating the spend.

3. Third party suppliers

Engaging with suppliers is a further option – you are likely going to have an element of your meeting spend being booked at the same hotels that staff stay in when they are travelling. Therefore, speaking to these suppliers either direct or via your TMC can help you identify the size of the pot.

4. Booker community

Last but possibly most informative is your booker community – you will already have a good idea of where these key stakeholders are in your business either through prior engagement or identified through your review of general ledger and expenses data. Engagement with this community can help you to understand if the identified spend is related to meetings and if so how, where and why you spend on external Meetings. Engaging these stakeholders early in the journey will also support you in developing a SMM that is more likely to be adopted quickly and widely across your business.

SMM is very data-driven by nature and this is the key to realising its value. However, having data is only the first step – generating data insights and how you then use them to enhance your SMM is the next step.

The first point to recognise is that meeting costs are only a small part of the picture – in fact the direct costs like venue hire, audio visual and so on, equate to only 15% of the total cost of people getting together for meetings. Therefore, when you have a meeting location, consider if it is the best value place for that meeting to take place or if you could change venue to reduce travel costs and improve productivity and wellbeing for the attendees by reducing travel time.

In the below tables we have outlined the Average Day Delegate Rate for popular meeting locations across the UK. With a great rail network creating easily accessible ‘hubs’ across the country why not consider one of the alternative destinations for your next meeting? This is just one insight that can start your SMM journey.

This blog was written by Lone Konradsen, Head of Customer Programme Optimisation at Capita Travel & Events. Want some advice on how to use your data to evolve your SMM? Why not speak to us on stand B140, register for your FREE visitor pass at www.businesstravelshow.com

Traveller Wellbeing – Who owns the travel time?

By Matthew Holman, Head of Traveller Wellbeing at Capita Travel and Events.

It’s 03:00, I am in bed at home and my alarm goes off. It is time to get up.  This is not a ‘normal’ day.  It is a business travel day and I need to fly to Amsterdam for a meeting.  I have to catch the 06:40 flight from Heathrow to arrive in Amsterdam at 09:05.  My meeting is in the city at a client’s office from 11:00 until 13:00. 

Now, here is my quandary: during the booking process I know that my company policy is to book travel at the lowest cost. I check for my return flight. The more convenient 15:00 departure is available, but costs £160, whereas the 21:15 is also available and costs just £67 (saving £93 for my company), but costing six hours of ‘my time’.  I am cost conscious for my organisation (it’s in policy) so I choose the later flight.  This now means that I land at Heathrow at 21:30, with all my best hopes that I clear security, head to the (lowest cost) car parking option and return home by - at the earliest – 23:00, before hoping to fall straight into bed and sleep. 

From getting out of bed to getting back into bed I have spent 20 hours of my 24-hour day.

This brings forward two questions:

1. When does my work day start?
2. Who owns my travel time?

The European Working Time Directive states the following entitlements for employees:

• An average of 48 hours ‘working’ in the working week 
• 11 hours of rest a day and the right to one day off each week 
• The right to a rest break if the working day is longer than six hours

In relation to travel time, the regulations state: Travel time to and from work is not usually counted as working hours. However, travel as part of the employee's duties is.

So, what is the answer to the question? Does my trip to Amsterdam belong to me or is it owned by my company and, therefore, have I already worked 20 of my 48 hour (average) this week?  We then bring up other questions as well:

1. Do I get time to recover before my next trip/working day? 
2. Does my company recognise how long my day is?

If we compare a business travel day to my normal working day, the patterns are very different. I know when I need to leave to get to the office, I know what time I will be working from – to, and what time I will get home. All is very clear.

The above was my life for 20 years. I was a very frequent traveller, and day trips to Europe were perfectly normal and expected as part of my job in sales. I didn’t mind, but also didn’t recognise the long-term impact until I had my own personal mental health crisis in 2016, caused by fatigue, burnout and an unsupportive organisation. This must change and these questions must be addressed.

What our data tells us about travel time

Looking at how long our customers travel within the day, 19% of the return trips undertaken this year are on the same day - with 14% of them being UK domestic flights and 5% to / from Europe. The average duration of these flights vary from just under one hour in the UK, to just under two hours for flights to Europe – add to that the journey time to / from the airport and the one hour pre-flight check in cut off - a same day return trip can incorporate anything from four to eight hours (or more) of travelling, which does not leave a lot of productive time for travellers to do the job they actually travelled to achieve in the first place.

When looking at the times of travel, then 18% of trips take place during unsocial hours (before 7am or after 7pm). In the UK this is less prevalent, with only 10% of trips, but increasing to 20% for European trips.

Lastly, there is the question of whether it is reasonable to expect your employees to spend part of their weekends travelling for work. Overall, 15% of trips undertaken this year have departed or arrived on a weekend (outbound Friday - Sunday or inbound Saturday - Sunday). When looking at the destination we have less weekend travel on UK domestic trips, with 7% incorporating a weekend, and see an increase to 15% for European trip.  

If we take this further and look at the difference of time spent travelling via air vs rail, we can see some routes don’t have much time difference. For example, Edinburgh to Manchester has just a 10-minute time difference yet rail costs less than half the air cost! By switching to rail for ‘long journeys’ it could aid productivity and health with the ability to move around and alleviate the stress that comes with airport security and queues.

Taking a smarter working approach

I manage my life differently now, not least by trying to live by the Capita Travel and Events’ Smarter Working practices and applying the Five Ways to Wellbeing framework.

When I must attend a meeting – especially overseas – I consider the following:

1. Ask and check if the trip is absolutely necessary
2. Try to work around sociable hours for travel. Whilst being conscious of the trip cost, I now also put greater emphasis on the cost of my time
3. Plan as far in advance for the trip, know my itinerary and have everything confirmed
4. When I travel, I sleep whenever I feel tired (I can nap 2-3 times a day).  I keep hydrated with plenty of water, and I try my best to eat light meals and nothing too heavy. 
5. On a day trip, I will try and walk as much as possible during the day to keep active
6. Take time on my return to rest well, recover and prepare for the next activity.

Capita’s Five Ways to Wellbeing when travelling for work highlights the importance not only of being active and healthy, but also keeping connected with friends, family and colleagues, and doing everything you can to be at your best.

We use it to help organisations shape their travel programmes to what matters really to their travellers’ wellbeing, but it is also a practical and common-sense way to think about the things you can do to take personal ownership of time on the road.

We have recently incorporated Smarter working dashboards for our customers so organisations can see the impact on people and making necessary changes.

All of these initiatives are one step closer to raising awareness, understanding and solving the challenge of who owns the travel time and how it can be optimised for both traveller and the organisation.

Capital Travel and Events is exhibiting at Business Travel Show, the international event for business travel, taking place 26-27 February 2020 at Olympia London. Visitor registration is open now at https://www.businesstravelshow.com/register