Managing Travel for a Growing Remote Workforce
The rise of remote and hybrid work is one of the most significant transformations in the modern workplace. While it has reduced daily commuting, it has fundamentally changed the landscape of business travel. Travel is no longer just for sales meetings and client visits. It has become a critical tool for building company culture, fostering collaboration, and connecting a distributed workforce.
For travel managers and finance leaders, this presents a new set of challenges and opportunities. How do you manage travel for employees who don't have a home office? How do you budget for and organize large-scale team offsites? Adapting your travel program to this new reality is essential for success.
The New Reasons We Travel
In a remote-first world, business travel is becoming more intentional and purpose-driven.
- Team Offsites and Retreats: With teams spread across the country or the globe, periodic in-person gatherings are essential for building relationships and driving innovation. These events require sophisticated group travel management, often involving coordinating travel for dozens or even hundreds of employees.
- Onboarding and Training: Bringing new remote hires to a central office for their first week is a powerful way to immerse them in the company culture and provide hands-on training.
- Project-Based Collaboration: For critical projects, flying a distributed team to a single location for an intensive "sprint week" can be far more effective than relying solely on video calls.
Adapting Your Travel Policy
Your traditional travel policy may not be equipped to handle these new travel patterns.
- Define "Commuting" vs. "Travel": Your policy must clearly define when a trip to a company office is considered business travel versus a personal commute. A common approach is to designate one office as a remote employee's "home base" and consider any travel to other offices as business travel.
- Create Event-Specific Policies: An all-company retreat will have different budget and booking parameters than a standard client visit. A modern travel management platform allows you to create event-specific policies that can be applied to a designated group of travelers for a specific time period.
- Guest and Non-Employee Travel: Your program must be able to handle travel for non-employees, such as new candidates flying in for a final interview or contractors joining a project team on-site.
The Logistical Challenges of Group Travel
Organizing a team offsite is a massive logistical undertaking.
- Coordination is Key: Managing flights and hotels for a large group from different origin cities is complex. Using a platform that provides a central dashboard to track all traveler itineraries is crucial.
- Budgeting and Tracking: You need a way to tag all expenses related to a specific event to accurately track the total cost and ROI. Using custom "TripTags" in your expense system can automate this process.
- Expert Support: Don't go it alone. Partner with your travel management company's group travel specialists. They can help you source venues, negotiate hotel blocks, and manage the complex logistics, freeing you up to focus on the event's agenda.
The shift to remote work has made strategic travel management more important than ever. By adapting your policies, leveraging the right technology, and planning for new types of travel, you can build a program that supports your distributed workforce and strengthens your company culture.
Need help planning your next team offsite?