When it comes to corporate travel, well-defined policies are critical for ensuring compliance, managing costs, and maintaining a seamless experience for employees. Yet, many organizations struggle to craft travel policies that are effective, efficient, and user-friendly. The recent webinar, From Resistance to Buy In: Why Travel Policies Fail and How to Fix Them, presented by Emburse, brought together thought leaders to explore why travel policies often fall short and how organizations can embrace modern solutions to overcome these challenges.
Led by Julie Blankenship, Principal Extended Services Consultant at Emburse, and John Berkley, VP of Travel at Emburse, the session provided actionable strategies to help organizations better align travel policies with employee needs while ensuring compliance and achieving organizational goals.
Let’s break down the key takeaways from this fascinating event.
The Challenges of Corporate Travel Policies
In the opening discussion, John Berkley highlighted several common reasons why travel policies fail. These pitfalls include:
Overly Complex and Restrictive Policies
Many organizations approach policy creation with an exhaustive mindset, attempting to account for every possible scenario. Berkley warned against this approach, stating:
"There are some companies that feel like they need to detail every possible situation and lay out every possible rule that traveler should follow... it creates discomfort or inefficiency."
Instead, policies should focus on providing guiding principles designed to empower employees rather than hinder them.
Poor Communication
Policies often fail to reach employees at the right time—during the booking and expense stages—leading to confusion and non-compliance. Berkley emphasized:
"Policies are often posted somewhere on the corporate intranet... which doesn't, by convenience, flow into the process of travelers booking their travel and expensing their travel."
Misaligned Incentives
There’s often a disconnect between corporate goals and employee needs. Berkley stressed the importance of balancing cost-saving objectives with traveler comfort:
"Making sure that you're balancing traveler comfort, efficiency, and reasonableness with your corporate savings objectives is incredibly important."
Outdated Tools and Processes
Travelers face unnecessary headaches with outdated systems that don’t support policy adherence in a simple, user-friendly way. This frustration leads to inefficiencies that impact both cost and compliance.
Employee Perception of Travel Policies
A major focus of the discussion was how employees perceive overly complex or restrictive travel policies. Such policies can feel like barriers to successful business trips or a lack of trust in employee decision-making. Julie Blankenship explained:
"Policies that are restrictive and rules-based rather than guideline-based can be seen as barriers... and make the travelers feel that they don't have choices on how the trip will be successful."
The result? Increased company costs, compliance risks, and poor employee experiences.
Key Elements for Better Travel Policies
The speakers outlined several critical components for designing more effective policies:
Design Employee-Friendly Policies
Travel policies should respect employees’ time and judgment. According to Berkley, the right approach involves creating policies that emphasize trust and simplicity:
"The policy, when they read it, should convey to them that we're respecting their time, their comfort, and their ability to judge what is a good business trip."
Travelers are more likely to comply when policies feel fair and flexible—guidelines that act as guardrails, not handcuffs.
Communicate Clearly and Consistently
A short and simple travel policy is easier for employees to absorb. Berkley mentioned that even global organizations like Microsoft use a policy document that is two pages or less.
Moreover, the speakers urged organizations to move away from static, PDF-based policies and incorporate dynamic, in-the-moment guidance at critical junctures:
"Online booking tools and expense systems should educate the traveler as they're booking and expensing to guide them to compliance."
Provide a Great User Experience
Convenience is a major driver of compliance. John Berkley noted:
"The more it is convenient to do something, the more they will do it."
By leveraging intuitive tools and processes—such as pre-trip approvals, expense automation, and mobile expense tracking—organizations can dramatically improve traveler adherence.
Build in Accountability and Transparency
Accountability ensures that non-compliance is addressed while making expectations clear. Travel policies must include mechanisms that help employees understand what’s in policy and what’s out of policy, while also providing timely feedback.
Transforming Travel Policies with Technology
Julie Blankenship walked attendees through the powerful capabilities of Emburse tools that help organizations enforce travel policies across the full lifecycle of a business trip.
Pre-Trip Controls
Features like pre-approval requests allow organizations to enforce policy guidance before any money is spent. Blankenship explained:
"Pre-approval spend request lets employees capture anticipated travel spend before they book it... giving your organization a chance to provide real-time policy guidance."
Corporate Payment Controls
Corporate Mastercards offer built-in compliance tools, ensuring that spending is aligned with policy restrictions. Blankenship noted:
"Your organization can set controls around dates, merchant categories, spend limits, and any other policy requirements baked into the Emburse card module."
Integrated Booking Links
Embedding preferred booking tools directly into the homepage simplifies the experience for travelers while ensuring a guided, compliant process. As Blankenship described:
"Make the approved path for your employees the easy path."
Post-Trip Automation
Expense reconciliation processes save employees stress after their trips. Emburse AI automatically merges transactions, receipts, and pre-approval data to streamline submission:
"Smarter controls create better results for both the business and the people who travel."
Poll Insights and Engagement
Throughout the webinar, attendees actively participated in polls hosted by Taylor Dekorte. The engagement helped highlight key trends and challenges across organizations. For example, one poll revealed that a significant number of participants felt that their travel policies broke down due to:
- Out-of-policy bookings
- Ignored rules
- Lack of awareness
John Berkley responded to these findings, stating:
"Out-of-policy bookings usually result from maybe ignoring the rules or a lack of education."
The polls reinforced the importance of building policies that emphasize education, intuitive tools, and clear communication.
Conclusion: Rethink, Simplify, and Integrate
The webinar underscored that travel policies are most effective when they are simple, employee-focused, and integrated into the tools employees use every day.
John Berkley summed it up perfectly:
"You want to develop a travel policy that minimizes negative employee perspectives…and accentuates the positive parts of the travel policy."
By prioritizing convenience, trust, and timely communication, organizations can transform travel policies from frustrating roadblocks into seamless enablers of successful business trips.
Emburse’s suite of tools—including pre-approval requests, corporate payment controls, integrated booking links, and automated expense reconciliation—provides organizations with the infrastructure to achieve compliance and consistency without sacrificing employee satisfaction.
Looking ahead, this timely discussion reminds us that the future of travel policy design hinges on marrying technology, process alignment, and employee empathy. As travel continues to evolve, organizations would do well to embrace these principles and ensure their policies serve both the business and its people.
Don’t Miss the Next Webinar!
Building on this discussion, Emburse will host another webinar on October 22, focusing on compliance best practices.
Be sure to sign up for updates and take advantage of Emburse’s innovative solutions.
About the Speakers:
Julie Blankenship | Principal Extended Services Consultant, Emburse (she/her)
Julie provided in-depth insights on how Emburse’s tools streamline and enforce travel policy compliance.
John Berkley | VP of Travel, Emburse (he/him)
John shared valuable thought leadership on the challenges and nuances of corporate travel policies, emphasizing practical strategies to improve compliance and traveler satisfaction.