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

GUEST BLOG: Companies embrace business travel and expense report management as part of their digital transformation

Goodbye Bureaucracy

In business travel, as in many other sectors, advances in technology have led to a shift in users’ habits, revolutionising the entire industry. Meeting the expectations of their employees in terms of technology is just as important to companies as implementing travel policies, keeping costs in check and guaranteeing the safety of their travellers. When they are at work, employees expect to find the same fast and intuitive tools that they use to organise their lives at home. Today, it is unthinkable to spend an hour looking for the perfect Paris-London flight that both complies with company policy and arrives on time for a meeting. The same goes for devoting hours to going through receipts, submitting an expense report and being reimbursed months later. We expect things to be easier with technology. Companies no longer have a choice: they must do away with bureaucratic red tape and usher their travel and expense report management into the digital era.

Conscious of this two-fold challenge – satisfying users while helping companies to achieve their objectives – KDS offers fast, simple solutions intended to play a key role in businesses’ digital transformation projects.

Automating business travel and expense report management offers users a simpler, faster and more consistent experience. With traditional tools, expenses generated during the trip are not integrated into the booking process, which is often limited only to transport and accommodations. With KDS Neo, you can book an entire trip (taxis, accommodation, transport, shuttle buses, additional baggage, upgraded seating, etc.) and at the same time, on the same platform, manage your expense reports via web or mobile. The unified platform offers usability on par with the best-loved mainstream websites. As for companies, they can expedite processes, automate certain tasks and get greater visibility and control over the actual costs of trips, allowing them to step up their management of assignments and contracts. And it's all totally paperless thanks to KDS Neo digital expense reports, which have the same legal value as the original documents.

For improved efficiency and a faster response to complex situations ... the only way is technology

Productivity is a key concern for senior management teams and deploying platforms to manage business trips and adaptable and user-friendly expense reports is now inevitable. Every company seems to have a strategy for this.

For a long time, the French engineering firm, TechnipFMC, managed its employees’ business travel (an average of 20,000 to 25,000 trips a year) using an internally developed tool which required many manual processes. For its international projects a wide range of personnel are required to travel at different phases of the projects (preliminary study, development, construction, transport to the oilfield, on-site installation), which led TechnipFMC, like many companies, to seek simplicity, responsiveness and control for its travel programme.

“We have to be reactive, so we need travel booking tools that are a perfect fit for the very specific constraints of our industry,” highlights Claude Lelièvre, who handles Regional Travel Management Development for TechnipFMC in the EMIA region. “To meet the expectations of our project assistants, who are often in charge of business trips, and to cater to the frequent changes and last-minute requests that they are faced with, we opted for a tool that is complete, flexible, agile, and highly user-friendly.” At TechnipFMC, bookings can now be made much more quickly, and the company has significantly reduced the length of a typical expense reimbursement cycle.

In addition to these operational factors, companies also need to forge ahead with the digital transformation for strategic reasons. This transformation and a company’s choice of tools can influence its image and culture. A company’s internal tools and processes should reflect its vision, its strategy, and the way it does business with clients and suppliers.

Thanks to a significant investment in R&D, KDS is able to keep innovating, pre-empting advances in technology and regulations and helping its clients to achieve their objectives. As an account manager, thanks to the implementation of KDS Neo, I’m fortunate enough to to witness this with my clients, especially at TechnipFMC.

If you would like to know more, please feel free to contact me and to read the TechnipFMC case study: https://www.kds.com/case-studies/technipfmc-visibility-flexibility-and-safety-of-business-trips/ 

This post was written by Romain Fory, Key Account Manager, KDS, who are exhibiting at Business Travel Show on 20-21 February 2019. Register for your free ticket now at www.businesstravelshow.com/register 

GUEST BLOG: Where do we meet?

If people are working from anywhere in the world, they can meet anywhere in the world! Do you have virtual teams in your company? Colleagues or team members who are based in different offices? How do you bring them together?

By 2020, 50% of the people will work remotely

More and more companies are working with virtual teams. Technology today allows us to bring people together in a virtual space from different locations around the world. There are actually already a big group of companies which are operating without any fixed office, so called virtual companies. The number of telecommuting workers has actually grown by 115% in a decade and Forbes estimates that by 2020 50% of the people will work remotely. 

Looking at the United States alone, there are already 3.7 million employees which work from home at least half of their time. This equals around 3% of the US workforce. This unstoppable trend creates a lot of opportunities for companies and employees. Corporates are finally able to recruit talent globally as well as create local footprints without the massive investments of entering a new market. Employees, are finally able to perfectly combine work and life without compromises.

None of the virtual communication tools can match the power of face-to-face meetings

In a world with many global or virtual teams, the way we plan our business travel changes. One would think that if we can work in a virtual environment, we would travel less. This is not necessarily the case, but we will travel differently as well as more strategically.

Video conferencing and virtual environments work well in phases when the team is aligned and the road ahead is clear. But when developing strategies or finding solutions for work challenges, nothing supports more creativity than physically bringing people together. 

Thus, working in virtual teams should always be linked to a number of face-to-face meetings. None of the communication tools can match the face-to-face meeting’s personal touch, so the need to bring people together changes the way we plan and organise business travel. 

Currently, managing business travel for remote teams is difficult mainly because of:

·        Planning and coordination is time intensive.

·        There is little knowledge on how to save costs.

·        Decisions are influenced by personal opinions rather than data.

·        You have to deal with many different applications to bring everyone together.

The way we organise corporate group travel is not efficient at all and that is where TroopTravel – Where do we meet? comes into place.

Meeting location selection is biased by personal opinions

Currently, when deciding on locations, personal opinions are driving the process. TroopTravel combines big data with learning to facilitate the planning and organisation of global groups.

Our case studies show that you can save 56% on travel costs by hosting a global board meeting of 17 travellers from 13 locations in New York / US rather than Nairobi / Kenya. As well, we have shown that two travellers from Madrid and Barcelona can save 60% by meeting in Ibiza or Mallorca rather than one of them flying to the other.

Price is not everything in the location selection process but it is an important factor. In addition to price, we are looking at visa requirements, experience-factor and other relevant elements. In the case of the TroopTravel core team, for example, when we bring everyone together, visa requirements are an important factor for us and we benefit from our own system’s analysis.

No more meetings in offices by 2020

By 2020 when 50% of the workforce works remotely, the way we coordinate meetings with clients, colleagues or partners has changed. In-person encounters will not happen at offices anymore. If people are working from anywhere in the world, they can meet anywhere in the world as well. Thus, a system like TroopTravel becomes crucial for coordination and planning of in-person meetings of people coming from different starting locations.

This post was written by Dennis Vilovic, one of the two founder of TroopTravel – Where do we meet? Connect with the TroopTravel team at the Business Travel Show, stand LP3 and vote for TroopTravel at the Disrupt Awards! .