Article: Travel benefits affect performance: How?

Employee Relations

Travel benefits affect performance: How?

Travel rewards also help instill fairness, accountability, and transparency besides creating a positive work environment, and strong bond between co-workers.
Travel benefits affect performance: How?

The travel and tourism Industry in India amounts to US $208.9 Bn. India spends more than the GDP of countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Surinam, etc on its travel and tourism, annually. 

Talking specifically about India’s business travel, it is the world’s tenth largest business travel market and is likely to clock the fastest growth in the next five years. And, there should not be any doubt about it. 

If we consider employees' happiness, ease of traveling, convenience and how valued they felt, the additional cost that companies incur, really does not matter, as it is harnessed by the organization in the long run. Yes, with happy employees, companies accrue profits.

Business Travel Industry

Indian business travel spending is expected to reach $ 90 Bn until 2030 from $30 Bn in 2015, a report by consultancy KPMG and FCM Travel Solutions said.

As per the J P Morgan Report (2009), the business travel spend differs based on an organization’s size. Fortune 500 corporations, for example, spend more than one-third of their travel and entertainment (T&E) budgets on air travel. For large companies, air travel represents 31% of their budget, while in the middle market airfares represent 24% of the budget. 

Companies spend on their employees, for they know a contended workforce results in a productive workforce. It is to be noted that the happiness quotient of an organization improves its productivity by 20% on an average. 

Google created a template for modern travel management with its Trips programme for both personal and business travels. The system works well for several reasons. It was egalitarian since employees keep a part of what they save for the company. It was empowering since Google gives travelers the flexibility to consider a wide range of options that fit in their budgets.

Benefits of rewarding employees with travel incentives 

Today, a company’s culture-defining element is synonymous with how it treats its employees. It has the power to impact everything from employee engagement to recruiting and retention. Encouraging employees to meet their targets or key result areas on quarterly/biannually/yearly basis while offering competitive travel benefits makes retention of talent easier. It’s a general trend that more than 20% of talent looks for a change in job within two years of joining. Travel incentives have proven retention of at least 50% of talent.

Travel rewards also help instill fairness, accountability, and transparency besides creating a positive work environment, and strong bond between co-workers. 

Besides, by granting employees a flexibility to book their own trips whether personal or business with some set mechanisms in place, makes a huge difference in instilling confidence in them. Balancing cost-control and comfort by allowing employees a reasonable range of options for their flights, hotels, and rental cars are good ideas to implement.

Incentivising employees with family travel benefits 

A company must offer some deals or discounted rates with any preferred hotels or airlines to its employees. Making a family trip planning convenient, either by providing booking support, for example, assistance through a corporate travel agent, dedicated online booking tool, administrative assistance, etc helps employees plan trips speedily. It saves the company’s time as well as develops integrity in an employee towards his workplace, ultimately establishing wins for the company only

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Topics: Employee Relations

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