WIREDGOV

Why should employers care where you are when you’re on business? Organisations with thorough travel booking systems are doing more than keeping an eye on your whereabouts.

Every week public sector employees are travelling across the country and overseas, covering many miles by train and plane. And with so many travel booking websites now available, all claiming to offer the cheapest and best deals, an increasing number of employees are taking sole responsibility for their own travel arrangements.

However, with more and more employees using different travel booking websites each time they travel, travel purchasing can quickly become fragmented. As a consequence, organisations can find it difficult to keep track of employees’ movements and maintain a central record of travel plans.

Some employees may question why this is important and may even suggest it is unnecessary for an organisation to ‘keep tabs’ on their every move. Put simply, this is not the case. There are very clear and sensible reasons why organisations require an effective travel management system.

The need to manage the safety of employee travel arrangements is a statutory obligation as well as a corporate responsibility for public authorities. Corporate manslaughter legislation extends to business travel, and therefore authorities must ensure they know where and when employees are travelling. This will ensure that, in the event of an emergency situation such as the London bombings, organisations can take a proactive approach and provide the necessary support to its employees. It is about duty of care - not Big Brother.

Understandably, for large public sector organisations it is not always easy to track and monitor the travel arrangements of hundreds of employees. This is why we are working with partner procurement organisations to support public authorities with the management of travel and accommodation booking. Our travel management services framework provides access to an advanced, intuitive online booking tool which enables customers to book online rail travel and hotel accommodation with no associated booking fee.

The service has been designed to provide real time, self-serve management information to help authorities understand and manage their travel needs. Importantly, it offers traveller monitoring to support corporate responsibility policies for tracking and emergency situations, providing greater transparency around employee travel arrangements.

We understand that public authorities have an endless list of priorities and we want to make it as straightforward as possible for organisations to meet their duty of care requirements. We’re confident that the travel management services framework will help them to achieve this.   

For more information on the travel management services framework click here or contacttravel@ypo.co.uk