How to Make Your Next Business Trip Work for You
How to make your next business trip work for you
Is it time away from the office?
Or is it the building of local relationships?
Whatever the most important part of a business trip is for you, the one constant is that happy, healthy employees make better deals and drive better sales when they’re away.
How to Create Happy Employees
Creating happy employees mean ensuring that they are looked after. In an office environment, we can take advantage of the fact that our employees are always going to shape up under their own steam and that they have themselves put together, when they are travelling, however, it’s our corporate responsibility to ensure they are well looked after.
This means making sure employees know where they’re going, why they’re going, what they need to get out of the trip and that they know there’s a safety net there to look after them.
Here are five ways to help your employees have a better business trip experience so that they stay happy and healthy, and you see the return on investment.
Travel Light
Don’t overload your employees with lots of things to carry. If they need to take a laptop to ensure it’s a lightweight one, if they need to take a phone to ensure its small and discreet, preferably working with the same charger as their personal one, and put as much paperwork as possible on a tablet rather than sending them with a wad of documents.
If your employee needs to be dressed smart, you’ll need to factor this into the packing requirements.
Search the Best Flights
If your employee needs to fly, work with them to get the best flight times for them, considering their family requirements. Companies like AmexGBT can manage this process for you and even save your employees’ preferences in their profile for next time, saving you time and money in the long run.
Hold Meetings Off-site
If your employee is going to another country, why not have a meeting off-site?
Sure, it’s nice to show the employee around the local office, but having a business lunch in a local restaurant instead of the canteen opens them up to experiencing local culture; it also gives your client or your overseas employees the chance to show off their locale.
Make A List
Who doesn’t like a good checklist? It’s a good idea to plan their trip to make the most effective use of their time. After all, time is money, and you want to be sending them away for as little time as possible.
Make a list of all of the things you need them to accomplish and work out beforehand how it will be done. This gives your employees something to aim for, but it also helps to keep the trip on schedule and ensure effective use of their time.
No one likes to be hanging around in a reception room or waiting area for hours waiting for a meeting to start that should have started hours ago.