Duty of care: how HR shapes the employee travel experience

While making face-to-face connections is an invaluable part of doing business in the modern world, there’s no doubt that travelling for work can place undue strain on employees.

A recent report from Amadeus – Business traveller well-being: How to keep your employees healthy, happy and productive when they travel for work – highlighted that while 91% of travel managers feel business travel is stressful, only 39% believe that their companies have taken steps to actively improve the well-being of its traveling employees.

Nadia Yahiaoui, Vice President of Sales, Corporations at Amadeus, is well aware of the challenges that travelling employees face. Stepping into the role in July 2019, Yahiaoui has brought her wealth of experience in the travel space to the role, aiding corporations and HR departments in the process of managing their business travel.

“Travel can be stressful at the best of times,” said Yahiaoui. “You’re in an unfamiliar environment, you can experience delays or missed connections, there are sometimes luggage issues – couple that with the fact that you’re travelling for work rather than relaxation and it can compound issues even further.”

As looking after travelling employees has wider duty of care implications, managing business travel wellbeing needs to be a top priority for employers, explains Yahiaoui. Employers need to consider how they can work with their travel managers and HR teams to mitigate stress factors for travellers before, during and after the business trip.

Additionally, with 1 in 5 business travellers feeling that travel makes them less effective, it’s crucial that employers provide the tools to help employees maximise their time.

“Embracing technology is a really powerful way to mitigate some of these issues,” said Yahiaoui. “Our report identified 37 key travel stress factors, but both delayed baggage and return flights ranked in the top five – technology can help handle flight delays, such as predicted and actual disruption alerts, and provide automated mobile rebooking for cancelled flights.”

From a health standpoint, Yahiaoui also points out that employers need to provide access to tools for employees to manage their health while on the road.

“On a basic level, you’ve got issues like awareness of allergies and ensuring that your employees have easy access to food,” said Yahiaoui.

“But it can be far more expansive too – for example, providing accommodation that features a swimming pool or holds yoga classes, to ensure that their regular routine isn’t heavily disrupted.”

There’s also often a tendency to mischaracterise the costs associated with such processes as unnecessary expenses. Yahiaoui is quick to point out that they’re actually investments into the wider health of the company which are influential for long-term staff retention.

“Business travel makes business happen – if you want to sign the deal, you need to travel. Employees who are looked after are going to be happier to travel on behalf of the company,” said Yahiaoui.

“Employees on the road are regularly exposed to issues like lack of sleep, lack of space, jetlag, time difference and extremes of weather. If you’re repeatedly sending them into these environments without equipping them properly, they’re not going to hang around.”

If you’re currently facing a company situation where work travel isn’t being viewed in a positive light, Yahiaoui believes that solutions to this dilemma should be centred around “flexibility”. 

Yahiaoui points to balance between cost and comfort, and the balance between business time and personal time while travelling as examples.

“HR needs to be working closely with the employees in order to see what their needs are,” explained Yahiaoui.

“Having a good travel policy and the technology to enable it isn’t just a short-term decision – it has much wider effects on the business itself. If you’re looking to mark yourself out as an employer of choice, looking after travelling employees is a great piece in the puzzle.”