A new survey shows that most companies review travel policy on an annual basis. It may seem routine, but travel policy updates and revisions should never be taken lightly, advised United Technologies Corp. global travel manager Laura McAndrew at a recent industry event.
UTC this week is rolling out a new global travel policy that has been a long time coming for no better reason than the depth of its development. Speaking at The Masters Program here last month, McAndrew asserted that care and completeness cannot be overplayed when it comes to policy creation and revision.
"Thoroughly scoping out your project ensures plan alignment and what you need to bring home as the owner of the travel policy," said McAndrew, whose $48 billion company has about 24,000 travelers. "Do your homework. Make sure you can answer to a full analysis of travel policy and be prepared to address all customers, whether they are individual travelers, functional departments or at the executive level."
Being so prepared starts with outlining the policy development project's objectives and scope. "Is it a new or revised policy?" McAndrew asked rhetorically. "What level of the organization are you touching? Is it a global policy, a divisional policy or business-unit policy?"
"Who are the customers?" she continued. "Travelers and functional departments that touch travel. Human resources, supply management and finance usually are key. But don't forget your business practices people or your president's leadership team. And that goes into your approval board. Make sure you have full approvals aligned when you're talking travel policy. And, who will be your working team to deploy policy?"
An oft-overlooked issue is the potential for travel policies to clash with policies developed by other departments. McAndrew suggested a "full analysis" to ensure alignment, including explanations of any required changes.
External sources of information also are important, she noted. "It's a big industry [and] there's a lot of networking," said McAndrew. "Ensure you have good alignment with your organization--whether large market, government or small market--and that you have your benchmarking in place." She also suggested that suppliers can play an important role in helping clients through the policy-building process.
Once travel managers address these "wheres" and "whos" of the policy plan, the questions of why and when are paramount. "Across the organization," McAndrew said, travel managers should be able to "very succinctly" answer why they are recommending a travel policy change. To that query, there's hardly a better answer than savings.
"What's in it for me?" McAndrew asked. "It comes down to the bottom line. If you don't have a full business case approved by finance and bought into at the executive level down through the organization and your divisions, you're not going to get there [and] it's just another piece of paper you're pushing through the organization. So, ensure you have the documentation and a top-level, deep-dive analysis as to why you're changing policy and that you do have buy-in from the organization."
She recommended offering executives a "very top-level snapshot of savings opportunities," while remaining prepared to explain what's under the surface--particularly when it comes to methodologies for calculating and measuring savings. McAndrew emphasized a similar take on establishing a project timeline, where executives and others would see the basic milestones but the travel manager is attuned to the details.
At UTC, she said, each successive milestone is not surpassed without "full alignment within the organization, bottom level to the executive level. You draft your policy, get functional departments to buy in, finalize the draft and get approval at the working level. You go back to your executive sponsors and get sign off. If presidential leadership is required, you go there."
It is only after months of revisions and incorporation of feedback that the policy is ready to be published, and McAndrew said the homework doesn't stop there as "you get your communications out and understand the process for deploying policy."
"At UTC, we're ready to go March 15 and [on the company intranet] have a one-page summary of travel policy with links into the policy manual that explains it in five languages," said McAndrew, noting that the policy development process took a year. The site even features a slide presentation highlighting changed sections, accompanied by a voice script. All this is "delivered in a link to all customers across all countries, whether they are travelers or not," she said. Among other changes, new language in UTC's policy tells travelers they should book domestic air travel seven days in advance and international trips 14 days ahead of time. The revised policy also requires travelers to book hotel rooms through the company's approved reservations tool for tracking and security purposes.
Here again, McAndrew suggested travel managers develop a summary presentation of the main changes for the executive level while equipping themselves with the information necessary to "articulate detail."
About 62 percent of companies review travel policy annually, according to a recent survey of 190 frequent travelers who said they were aware of the frequency of their companies' policy revisions. The Association of Corporate Travel Executives and the International Air Transport Association sponsored the poll, which ACTE sent to members last week.