Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER October 3, 2016 NEWS 3 your career in focus When it comes to practicing human resources, membership matters. Only HRPA offers Certified Human Resources Professional, Leader, and Executive designations: the new global standard for HR excellence and professionalism. The CHRP, CHRL and CHRE designations demonstrate an HRPA member's commitment to their career and the success of their organization. P U T Y O U R C A R E E R I N F O C U S hrpa.ca/infocus prone to have technology replace the physical meeting." e trend seems to be moving toward more travel, not less, ac- cording to Dasilva. Around 10 years ago, compa- nies were first seeing the rise of virtual meetings but "now we are almost seeing a reversal of that," she said. "I think we are set for increased business travel as we increasingly trade with other countries." But more modest growth should be expected, said Liu. "I don't see it dropping, I do see steady, moderate growth (and) after the elections are over in the U.S., we will have a little more sense of what's in store for the near future and that will have an impact on travel, definitely." Challenges for travellers, HR Four-in-five (81 per cent) Canadi- an business travellers are satisfied with their overall business travel experience, which is above the average satisfaction rate of those surveyed around the globe (73 per cent). However, airport security checks have become a major has- sle for many travellers, according to the survey. For Canadian travel- lers, the rate of security satisfac- tion dropped from 100 in 2015 to 94.7 for 2016. "One of the biggest dissatisfiers for travellers is obviously the se- curity check-in at the airport," said Dasilva. "(But) there's a paradox because obviously security is important. Everyone wants to feel safe while they are on the road. at's why travel policies are important. It's important that the company pro- vides a very holistic travel policy for their employees," she said. And once a worker arrives safely at an airport or hotel, the issue of connectivity is a problem. Seventy-seven per cent of respon- dents said wi-fi access is critical to work productivity while travelling and hotel rooms provide much greater wi-fi reliability for travel- lers over what is experienced in airports — 84 per cent are satis- fied with hotel wi-fi access, versus 50 per cent on airplanes. But logging in to the office can offer challenges to workers as well. "at's a major dissatisfier for the travellers in this survey, the fact that when they are travelling, they find it hard to log on," said Dasilva. "Often, it's because their own work system makes it very dif- ficult because of the security settings." And when it comes to expense management, technology also has an effect on satisfaction. "A lot of Canadian businesses report having to manually fill in their expense reports which can obviously be very time-consum- ing and cumbersome, a process often taking maybe two hours out of your working week," said Dasilva. Overall, business travellers are using electronic ways to submit expenses, but in Canada the up- tick remains slow. "When companies put in ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems, they tend to do the head- quarters first and eventually it's a gradual rollout but as the world becomes more technical, there's a greater expectation that these things are going to become more available," said Dasilva. Submitting expense forms cre- ated the third-highest level of anx- iety for business travellers at 17 per cent, behind lack of access to wi-fi (25 per cent) and getting from one place to another (19 per cent). In addition to expense submit- ting, communication of corporate travel policies also contributed to a level of distaste. But com- munication goes both ways, said Dasilva. "If we were to survey to see how many people have actually read their policy, it would probably be in the 50 percentile number, she said. "Sometimes, people think their company's policies are punitive and actually they're not." More forward-thinking com- panies ensure that business travellers face very little barriers from head office when travelling abroad, said Dasilva. "If a company is quite open in its communication about why the travel policy is important, what it is there to achieve, how travel is important, the overall success of the organization is, I think people buy into it more." It's clear that Canadians view business travel as essential to their overall performance, said Roman. "But with increasing costs of doing business, companies should make sure they have a solid busi- ness travel policy in place to man- age spending and ensure they are getting the most value out of their business travel." Sharing economy e sharing economy also plays into business travel satisfaction. Services such as Uber and Lyft are permitted by 51 per cent of employers, while 34 per cent of companies permit travellers to use home-sharing services such as Airbnb, found the Amex-GB- TA survey. Millennials are more interested in using these types of services over the older group. e use of sharing economy businesses are "slowly being ac- cepted" by corporate travel plan- ners, said Hermus. The conference board, in a joint survey with the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, found Uber had the highest ac- ceptance rate, at 50 per cent, of businesses that allowed claims for reimbursement. Airbnb had a 21 per cent acceptance rate. BUSINESS < pg. 2 Travel headaches include wi-fi, security Logging into the office remotely can be a challenge for business travellers.

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