Sometimes it’s necessary to send one’s staff away on business trips. When such trips are necessary, employees are not responsible for making travel arrangements themselves. Instead, it is a company’s HR department that handles bookings, flights, and reservations.
If you have to send your employees away on a business trip, then you need to make sure that they are satisfied, content, and looked after. Failing to look out for them (or to prepare their trip properly) could lead to them quitting.
This post will tell you how mismanagement of a trip can negatively impact your employees’ lives (and why it could lead to them quitting their jobs).
Causing Chaos
If you don’t carefully arrange business trips, then you could cause unnecessary chaos in your employees’ lives. Nobody wants to have to travel to a foreign country, and then have to deal with mistakes, booking errors, and other issues. The best way to avoid any of this happening is to work with a corporate travel service, who will be able to book everything on your behalf. Then, if anything does go wrong you won’t be held responsible. If there are any issues with your employees’ bookings or travel arrangements, then it could negatively impact your relationship with them, and with the clients that they have been dispatched to meet. Disrupting clients’ lives could lead to them refusing to do further business with you.
Unnecessary Anxiety
Do you really want to cause your business’s employees anxiety and stress? Travel chaos will inevitably lead to them experiencing anxiety (or stress). Anxiety and stress can put their health at risk. If there are booking errors, for example, then in addition to causing them a lot of stress, it could lead to them having nowhere to sleep, which is even worse for their health. Everything needs to be booked and arranged properly in advance so that your staff does not have to deal with the stress and anxiety that will inevitably be caused by a poorly arranged and booked business trip.
Spending Money
If your employees’ hotel rooms haven’t been booked properly or if there are any other travel issues, it could lead to them having to spend their own money. Employees should never have to spend their own money on a business trip. After all, they are doing you a favor by going away. If you want their trip abroad to be pleasant and as stress-free as possible, then consider giving them an allowance. It is a good idea to give them a copy of your company’s credit card, so they can spend whatever they need to.
Job Dissatisfaction
Stress, anxiety, and poorly arranged bookings will inevitably lead to your staff feeling dissatisfied with their jobs. Dissatisfied staff can be very bad for employee retention. Low employee retention is an indication that your company isn’t very pleasant to work for. Not only will poor employee retention cost you a lot of money (because you will have to invest more into hiring) but it could also lead to your company developing a negative reputation. People talk, after all. If your company doesn’t treat its staff well, then word will spread, and people may no longer apply for listings or positions at your company when they come up.
Interrupting Arrangements
If your staff has been dispatched to a foreign country to meet with potential clients or investors, then booking errors or interruptions to their travel arrangements could make you look disorganized. Looking disorganized is the worst way to come across when you are trying to secure somebody’s business or investment. Make sure that everything is booked well in advance of your employees’ trip so that no interruptions or problems occur. Again, you can hire a professional travel planning company, that can make sure that everything is arranged, planned, and in order, ensuring no problems arise.
Showing Disregard
Finally, when you don’t take steps to protect your staff and ensure that travel arrangements are all in order, you show reckless disregard and make it look like you don’t care about your employees. Why would your staff want to continue working for you if it looks like you don’t care about them? Showing disregard is a very bad thing to do. People won’t want to continue working for you if you do not care about them, as mentioned earlier. It may also make your employees think of you badly, which could lead to them taking shortcuts at work, making intentional errors, and generally just trying to make your life more difficult.
If you have to send staff away on international business trips, then you need to take steps to ensure everything is properly booked, and that they are properly taken care of. This is easy to do, really. All you have to do is hire a travel planning company, who can do all of this for you.