Research undertaken by 'Health Shield' shows absenteeism costs businesses more than £12.8 billion per annum in wages alone, and many more HR departments are now being tasked with engaging with employees and keeping absence rates as low as possible.
Business travel is widely acknowledged to place pressures on health and well-being, so businesses must proactively mitigate this.
Exacerbating factors include high frequency of trips, red eye flights, coping with numerous time zones and not enough time to recuperate between trips. Organisations that insist their travellers fly indirect routes to save money might consider the toll that takes on travellers; paying extra to fly direct is less expensive than replacing burned-out employees.
Paying extra to fly direct is less expensive than replacing burned-out employees.
Encouraging a collaborative approach between travel, HR and procurement would help mitigate many of these problems.
A report published in Harvard Business Review this year, 'just how bad is business travel for your health?' looks at the impact of spending 14 or more nights away from home per month and found that even with the increasing sophistication of conference calls and video chat, business travel is a prominent feature of many occupations and is likely to remain so. It will continue to be an avenue of professional advancement, and the
opportunity to travel is often touted by companies as a benefit in their recruitment of talent.
The report concludes, “If you have employees who are often between cities, you owe it to them to provide the education, tools and resources so they can maintain healthy lifestyles while on the road.”
Today’s travel policies, therefore, are more than a series of rules addressing rate caps or class of travel. They recognise business travel as a key business driver and provide a framework that protects and enables both the company and their people.