Let’s face it, organising business trips for your employees is rarely a smooth process. This is particularly the case when your employees see their business travel as something to be endured, which takes them away from home when they would rather be with their families and friends. However, what if your employees weren’t just missing out on quality time at home, but also on hundreds of pounds in unclaimed expenses every time they head abroad?
We recently carried out research into the attitudes and opinions of regular business travellers which found that they’re shouldering an unfair financial burden through unclaimed business expenses. In fact, the average business traveller will lose out on £142 in unclaimed expenses for every business trip they take. When it came to the business expenses that they did reclaim, most business travellers struggled to get these in less than two weeks. Not only are workers being made to wait, but they are also missing out on reclaiming the full cost of their trip.
This simply isn’t sustainable. Jobs that require large numbers of trips abroad are demanding and require the best employees. If business travel is seen as expensive or unfair, this could offset the current image of it as glamourous and exciting. After all, employees shouldn’t have to lose out at the company’s expense.
So how can those in the HR profession help to minimise the amount workers spend, which they then can’t reclaim?
Firstly, workers need to be given simple and clear guidance on how their payments should be made. If your employee insists on making payments in cash, this should be accompanied by a rigorous system of logging when payments are made, and a fair and consistent way to convert these payments from the foreign currency into the local currency. Nobody wants to feel out of pocket because of shifting exchange rates, whether it be you or your employee.
More likely, employees will want to make payments with their credit or debit card, and where they have not been supplied with a company card, they will have to use their own. In fact, our research found that this was most often the case for frequent business travellers, with almost two thirds saying that they used their personal credit or debit cards on their business trips.
When using credit or debit cards abroad, it’s so important that employees are told to check the fees they will be charged by their bank or card providers. Our survey found that less than 1 in 4 checked these before heading abroad and therefore didn’t know what they might be charged when paying in a foreign currency.
At the point of transaction your employees will have two options when using their credit or debit cards abroad. The first is to pay in the currency of the country that they’re currently in. If this option is selected then additional fees might be added by the bank or card provider which will vary from employee to employee – and already mentioned there’s no guarantee that they know what these are. Additional fees are also added later, meaning that one payment may appear multiple times in card statements.
Alternatively, your employees can opt to pay in their home currency which they are familiar with in a process known as dynamic currency conversion. Using this option means your employees will pay in the currency which they are most familiar with (and most likely also the currency which their budget was set in) meaning no need for rapid estimated currency conversions. Card and bank fees are replaced by a single DCC fee, included at the point of transaction, meaning your employee has a clearer idea of their expenditure, which will make it easier to reclaim, and therefore help to reduce the amount lost.
Business travel should be as easy and stress free for your employees as possible, both during the trip, and afterwards when the less glamorous process of reclaiming expenses takes place. By making your company’s business trips seamless, you can ensure that you continue to attract the best of the best.
