Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Jeanne Heydecker, who is an American expat living in India with over 20 years working in all possible industries from Nano Tech to Telecommunications. Back in the days she was one of the folks who wrote the book on Object Oriented Programming that is now part of our everyday technologies. She is an avid advocate for building sustainable businesses that both profit and make social impact. She has organised trade shows and corporate travel from Brazil to Burma (now known as Myanmar). Follow her exciting travel experiences live @jeanneleez or connect with her here on LinkedIn.

As the head of marketing for a group of telecom companies, I produce between 15 and twenty large trade shows worldwide every year. One of the largest and most difficult to control expenses is staffing. Over the years I have developed a process that works for the group and may be of use for you as well. As the department head, I've always looked at what could possibly happen so that the company is covered in all emergencies. While it may never happen, it is always good to ensure that your company is covered for all incidents should they occur to your staff.

Travel Policy Template

Write a policy manual that covers all guidelines for employee travel. Here are some of the points you should keep in mind: Detail the entire process, Identify the staff involved (HR, finance, departmental heads, etc.) that are part of the process, Include templates for all forms to be completed or links to your online service Include acceptable price ranges and modes for local conveyance, flight classes, and acceptable costs for hotels per staff title, e.g. our board members and CEO fly business class, all others economy. We also utilize a sliding scale for per diems - VPs get $45 a day, while sales staff get $40.

Don’t Forget Cultural Awareness

This document should also cover marketing and cultural issues when traveling overseas. A friend contacted me one day and told me that on her trip back from Bangkok, there was a drunk passenger on the plane who was sexually harassing the flight attendant and cracking loud, offensive jokes to his colleague. Guess what? She recognized the gent as someone who worked for my company. Many of the people on that plane were coming back from the same trade show, so the possibility is that someone else recognized this person as representing our company - hopefully none of our potential customers. Staff need to understand that their negative actions overseas reflect poorly on the brand.

I've been guilty myself of not seeing cultural cues and providing links to cross-cultural web sites can be very helpful. At another company I worked for, one of my staff had approached a woman in Qatar to ask directions and her male companion felt insulted. The ensuing argument turned into a physical fight and he was arrested. With a few links about local culture, this may have been avoided.

Plan for Emergencies

You may want to ensure that all staff have the phone number for their Embassy to ensure their rights are preserved. Beyond this, we've had staff mugged, their luggage stolen and at least one laptop, camera or phone seems to disappear at each show. Knowing where the closest Embassy is for getting a duplicate passport is important. (Our travel agent photocopies all pages of each staff member's passport, including all visas, just for this purpose.) These can be scanned and sent to the Embassy in question should someone's passport go missing.

Another thing to mention is how the company is liable if an employee gets seriously ill while working overseas. Ensure that each staff member has a health insurance carrier to pay for any catastrophic care that might be required overseas. Flight insurance may also be well worth the money if you keep tight schedules when traveling, e.g., if you fly the night before an important meeting and the flight gets delayed or cancelled, you have recourse beyond the airline itself.

Communications, Transport, and Housing

Budgeting is fairly straightforward once you have the policy set in place. I can identify the cost per ticket to a location by checking any travel web site like orbitz.com or makemytrip.com. I can assign costs based on the staff member's title. Same with per diems and hotels. We also supply local SIM cards for each staff member, with no capability for international dialing to keep costs down. Email and Skype are used from the hotels for personal contact with home.

My team negotiates with hotels to include breakfast and Wi-Fi as part of the package whenever possible. This stretches each staff member's per diems, so the only other costs we're charged for is local conveyance. All staff are allowed to take taxis to and from the show venue, but we encourage sharing as much as possible. All other travel, for dinner, sightseeing, etc. is part of their per diem.

This process of thinking, "What's the worst that could happen?" may seem pessimistic, but it's actually pragmatic. Planning ahead and protecting the company wherever possible is always a good idea, and fixed ranges for costs keep staff under budget.

If you’d like to know more about the Ingredients of a Good Travel Policy, you can join us at our webinar this Friday (the 20th) at 3 to 4 pm IST. Click here to register.