UC/Business? Economy will do?

Hi,

I am trying to find a consensus and your help would be much appreciated,

I am a company owner who flies to New York once a month, Tokyo once every two months and San Francisco anywhere up to three times a month. I always fly ecomony and don't collect any points, nor do I use any airline credit card. I simply look for a good deal although I do like flying with Virgin Atlantic.

The problem I have is that my employees expect to fly UC/Business class.

I have flown UC a few times but find i get there just the same using economy and am ready for work when I get there.

Your thoughts would be much appreciated.

Indeed you do get from A to B the same time whatever class you fly in.

As the employer/owner it's down to you to set down clearly the policy for travel class and reimbursements so if you said 'economy only' then your staff will have to like it or lump it.

However, you could say you will pay for Econ but have no objection to staff using their own cash etc to upgrade if they want to but that will be up to them.

Maybe you should start collecting points and VS have flying.co for business which you could then use to reward staff (and yourself!) with upgrades once in a while.

The problem I have is that my employees expect to fly UC/Business class.

You're not the PM are you? )

I agree with Tonty. As it is your business, you have the final say as to what cabin your employees travel in. Is there anything written into their contracts about air travel?

Thanks for your replys.

The contracts don't state about travel levels. It just seems that it is expected. This is an issue that's building and I was just after a quick independent assessment of what people want.

Business eh?

Wow
You must be touching half a million miles / year (assuming you live in the UK).
That's a lot of miles not being claimed and great news for the airlines.
I suggest you join the Virgin Flying Club - enjoy the business lounges and put me down as an authorized user on your account!

I believe you definitely need to establish a policy for air travel within your business, to ensure expectations are managed.

Perhaps rules could include levels in which economy, PE or UC travel should be used i.e. importance of meeting or notice of meeting i.e. UC for short notice.

Perhaps PE is a good compromise? You could encourage individuals to then use their own miles (earned by each signing up for FC) to upgrade to UC when they earn enough!

At the end of the day, you are a business and need to operate as you see fit. As long as the expectations of the staff are managed then they should understand.

I can't believe you don't collect miles, do you join any FF schemes? With your travel you're nuts not to, at least for lounge access / revivals-like access.

As to whether you should enforce your staff to follow your personal rule or not, there are a lot of depends. What business are you in, is travel client billable, what calibre / expertise of staff do you hire, what do you pay them, can your company afford it, how often and how far do staff travel, do you require your staff to travel weekends, what is their routine when travelling, etc.?

I know of legion stories about how supposedly Bill Gates only used to travel in economy and forced everyone else to, which was and is total poppycock. I don't think you should set your company travel policy on your own preference / coping as an only factor. It is of course more complicated ...

Many companies set limits of Y only up to a certain number of hours, and J for over that, which is reasonable. Others tier travel policy by seniority. I suggest you should ask those who travel to present you with a proposal, backed up by a business case, then determine how to proceed?

Whatever you decide to do, sign up for Flying Co

Please understand the only reason I don't collect miles is due to the fact that I always travelby a different airline. Virgin, BA, AA, Emirates, ANA etc. It is just the thought of managing so many different accounts etc.

Also to further my point my annual spend on travel is between 25-30k. If I was to travel UC/business I can only imagine the bill.

Slinky09

My business is green energy research, totally contradicts the flying I know.

The company I work for scale air travel class on length of flight and seniority.

If the travel destinations for your employees are usually the same, Tokyo, JFK, SFO for example you could set particular rules.

For example, in my opinion there's often little benefit to flying above economy on day flights, unless you really have to get some work done in which case PE is fine. My usual route is between NYC-LHR and I only take UC if I need to take an overnight flight. In the other direction, LHR-NYC UC is unnecessary and if I'm hard up I take the day flight from EWR. If I need to work on a day flight PE does just fine.

I find it funny that so many companies pay money for UC/First between NYC-LHR regardless, most of the time its simply uneccessary and very expensive if travelling regularly. Don't let your employees indulge in the macho cache of limitless company paid business travel - surely they would rather you paid them a few thousand more a year? I'm just saying there are different situations; having a blanket policy of business for everyone regardless can be wasteful. I know staff morale is important but you're the boss and the bottom line matters!

My experience with various companies depends on what direction of travel your work is taking you - as has been mentioned previously by worc... But the rule of thumb was that you could fly in a 'premium cabin' but you were expected to hit the ground running once you landed and straight into meetings and your 'normal' day. Fly at the back of the plane and you had a day (sometimes the weekend) to 'acclimatise', i.e. catch up on shopping and some sleep and then hit the office the following morning.

[Scrooge]

The company I work for scale air travel class on length of flight and seniority.

That's what we do as well, though in our line of work the only ones that really travel for the company are execs and we have a company plane to use for shorter flights.

Whatever way you go at least the travel policy will be set by someone who travels, which is not always the case...

When I worked for a bank, it was length of journey that mattered. Basically, if within Europe, economy was the standard, anything further afield could be booked business.

Now I work for a US based software, hardware and consulting company. Here the rule is economy unless at a grade that applies to a tiny minority of the employees. This is in part born of the fact that they rely on frequent flyers to be upgraded by the airlines within the US, and in part to exhibit a zeal for expense management that can be shown to the client.

Paul

Just a suggestion that whilst it can pay to be flexible with which airline you travel to try and get a good deal I think in practice the savings from one over another are generally small and you could spend more time and money searching for a low fare than you actually save.

There is something to be said of showing some loyalty to a single airline and at least investigating 'what they can do' for your £ 30k annual spend.

Joining a loyalty programme dosent mean continually having to check accounts etc and you could in fact build up a bank of miles that you could use e.g. as an annual staff prize at essentally no cost to your company.

[mitchja]

The company I work for scale air travel class on length of flight and seniority.

Our work policy is also just based on length of flight too.

Off the top of my head it's something like any flight over 7 hours and you can fly business class. Because our HQ is based on the East Coast of the US this means no business class travel to/from the US. First Class is not allowed under any circumstances. Collecting miles is allowed though (some companies don't allow this)

The company I work for do also specify which airline we can use. Been a US company, these are obviously all US airlines.

The policy Paul mentions is pretty standard in the US for the HW/SW industry. Usually Senior Director/VP who book at least a certain number of trips per year get to travel Business, everyone else in Y.

One of the things that helps is that the policy applies pretty consistently across the industry, so that travel perks are usually not on the table as competitive advantage points in negotiating jobs against each other. Salary is the point of negotiation, and a company will usually rely on that to attract talent, while making travel/vacation/HR Benefits non-negotiable, and having some leeway on stock/options/sign on bonuses. Senior exec positions are a different beast of course. Senior consultants whose travel is billable may not fall under this policy.

IMO as a senior manager your only consideration on this point should be retention. I don't really see how you can prove conclusively that employee productivity is so much higher if they get to fly in paid biz class. But you would not want to lose folks because of this, so the retention angle is important. On the whole I wouldn't imagine this would be an issue in your industry, as it might be in the financial services industry.

I agree with other folks here that to not set yourself up to collect miles for yourself, if not to encourage your employees to do so as well, is somewhat self defeating. At the volume you are at, even if you are sharing across multiple airlines you are missing on some benefits. More to the point, as your spend approaches the 50k mark for the company, there are more or less formal programs that allow you to streamline spend by putting in place some fixed price costing, negotiate standard booking classes tickets will book into (thus making upgrades for employees easier) and sometimes conferring special tier status to one or more individuals in the company. UAs was quite public as a program, though it might not survive the merger; one person or more in the company (depending on spend) could be designated Global Services, which has the not inconsiderable advantage of seeing UA work very hard to rebook you on the best possible flight options in the not unusual case that you fall victim of irrops. In your position, not a benefit to be sniffed at. I would be surprised if most airlines were not amenable to some similar arrangement for a small company that promises a reasonably significant spend to them. In other words, it looks like you are beginning to reach enough spend that consolidating on fewer airline options, and setting a travel policy to go with this, would make some sense both financially, and for the intangible benefits it would bring. Your HR person should look into this for sure.

One option I have seen in some companies is that the company and the individual share the saving between classes so e.g. company policy might be to fly business but if the individual goes economy they get half the different and the firm gets the other half so there is an incentive for both parties

The contracts don't state about travel levels. It just seems that it is expected.

What staff sometimes "expect" is sometimes very different to the reality of things.
It sounds as if you don't have a massive corporate travel budget at your disposal, and business class fares are going to swallow a fair chunk of your available resources quickly.
My personal view would be to pay the cheapest economy fare at the time of booking (this may or may not be a miles upgradeable fare) and leave the choice of upgrading to a higher cabin (be it with their own cash, miles, both etc) to the discretion of your staff if they wish to do so.
You own the company and fly in economy , ergo, I do not think you are unreasonable in expecting your employees to do likewise .
DL

One option I have seen in some companies is that the company and the individual share the saving between classes so e.g. company policy might be to fly business but if the individual goes economy they get half the different and the firm gets the other half so there is an incentive for both parties

Now that's a pretty neat idea! What class did most employees choose?

Quick point to Grd81 - even if you carry on flying Econ, you can save between £30 - £100 a flight just by using Miles Plus Money fares with VS. (Granted, you won't earn TPs or Miles on those fares, but seen as that hasn't bothered you before you might as well burn off the miles you're entitled too).

Once you're signed up and logged in, clicked on "My Account" and you'll see an option to 'claim missing miles' from the past 6 months. You'll just need to know your booking ref, date of flights and the flight number. You claim each leg of the flight individually.

The company that I work for sets out the travel policy in the employee handbook. It states that we must travel in economy, although I would expect that if I chose to upgrade cabin using miles or cash at my own expense then this would be acceptable.

The company I work for scale air travel class on length of flight and seniority.

Our work policy is also just based on length of flight too.

Off the top of my head it's something like any flight over 7 hours and you can fly business class. Because our HQ is based on the East Coast of the US this means no business class travel to/from the US. First Class is not allowed under any circumstances. Collecting miles is allowed though (some companies don't allow this)

The company I work for do also specify which airline we can use. Been a US company, these are obviously all US airlines.

Similar policy to my company, who are US based. Flights under 6 hrs is economy only. Over 6 hours, it's business class BUT the company will pay $750 a sector if you volunteer to fly economy.

We have to use one of the preferred airlines. Good news for me, it's BA for European flights. For long-haul it's BA, VS, AA and United for long-haul. We also get complimentary Silver with VS. (For what's it worth)

This is all booked through our 3rd party travel agent.

I'd say that EU travel should always be economy, preferably with a low cost airline if cheaper.

Long Haul day flights PE, and long haul night flights UC.