Can a lack of business travel be career-limiting?

As an associate professor emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT), Ron Lancaster is a big fan of business travel.

Recently retired and living in Hamilton, Ont., he has seen much of the world over the years, having been a consultant for several international, private and public schools and a presenter at hundreds of conferences.

“It's provided me with an opportunity to be on a journey, to be a global citizen, to really get to know the world,” he says. “I have a massive collection of photographs from around the world of things that I see are mathematical, and I use those in workshops with teachers to make mathematics more interesting for kids.”

Business travel has been important for Lancaster in trying out new ideas and garnering feedback from others, such as teachers.

“A lot of them reach back to me and say, ‘Here's how things went, here's how I modified it.’ And so I learned from that,” he says.

Business travel career enhancing

More than nine in 10 (94%) Canadian business travellers say the future of their career depends on successful business travel in the coming year, including keeping up on the latest trends, technology and advancements (48%), establishing relationships with new clients (47%), and maintaining strong relationships with existing clients (44%).

For nearly two in five (37%), business travel is critical to forming meaningful relationships with co-workers. Travel is also essential to being more visible and building a stronger relationship with their managers for 28%, finds the survey by SAP Concur, which provides travel, expense, and invoice management.

“There's lots of data within the survey that shows that travelers are really feeling that the need for travel is part of their career growth, and they value that face to face interaction,” says Hrycoy.

“There’s reasons to travel when you're thinking about your job security and your career development — you're thinking about [how] you want to be in person to look at the latest trends, the technologies, the advancements, attend the conferences, see what's new in whatever field you're in. The overwhelming, positive impact of corporate travel in Canada is very evident, and people are very excited to get back into it.”

Lancaster says travel helped him become a better teacher.

“Because of all these experiences, my teaching practice has been improved.”

Venturing around the world has broadened his awareness of other countries and cultures, he says.

“Often, when students come into my class, and I eventually found out that they were from the Philippines or from Korea or wherever, in many cases we had something that we could talk about, it was a shared experience… there were some common things to talk about.”

Cutbacks to business travel impact employees

However, over 90% of the travelers say their company's travel budgets are being affected by the uncertain economy.

More than two in five (44%) cite inflation as one of the biggest threats to business travel today (compared to 34% globally), with another 33% citing cuts to travel budgets or travel freezes.

This includes reductions to both travel budgets (47%) and overnight trips (32%), with the latter being accomplished by requiring more same-day returns, says SAP Concur.

Companies’ financial concerns are forcing travelers to stay in lower quality accommodations or in less safe areas (28%) or book lower airline fares, even if they include layovers, indirect routes, or alternative airports (28%).

However, 21% of travellers say they would decline a business trip that required booking lower-class airfare or an indirect flight.

“Some companies are spending the extra due diligence on what travel looks like, so whether that is a shorter trip, or less people attending a conference, or if they're changing the suppliers that they use to lower-cost carriers or to a budget-friendly hotel,” says Kristen Hrycoy, senior global partner business manager at SAP Concur in Calgary.

“Companies need to find that balance between the cost-cutting measures and ensuring the employees that want to travel have the ability to travel, and that they're able to do it in a safe and sustainable way… Travelers are telling us that they want the flexibility to be able to make those choices.”

Health and safety concerns for business travellers

More than half of Canadian business travelers (51%) cite health and safety concerns as a top threat to business travel today, and 58% have changed accommodations on a business trip in the past 12 months because they felt unsafe, finds SAP Concur.

More than one-quarter (27%) have felt they were in immediate danger on a business trip, and nearly a third (30%) cite international or local conflicts as one of the top threats to business travel today.

Also concerning: Nearly one in three (30%) have experienced unfair or improper security screening, and 20% have been the target of unwanted sexual advances or comments, finds the survey.

A further 49% would decline a business trip for safety or social concerns about traveling to certain parts of the world or health concerns over a travel destination (44%).

“Unfortunately, some of those fears are pretty well-founded,” says Hrycoy, so employers that are sending their people back on the road really need to have a good focus on their health and safety.

Lancaster says he has travelled to some places where there has been unrest, but he’s always felt relatively safe — even when there were massive crowds joining in protests at the Hong Kong airport.

“I suppose some people might have felt unsafe, but I embraced the moment, I tried to watch what was going on — in fact, I took some pictures of the crowd because I thought it would be an interesting question for my students, to show them the picture and say, ‘So how many people are in this crowd?’ Because counting crowds is very political.”

How important is in person versus online?

The big question today is whether those companies that curtailed business travel during the pandemic are bringing it back.

“Trips are being scrutinized a little bit differently, like can it be done virtually? Or is there a value to go and have a face to face meeting? Every company really has their own idea of what that looks like,” says Hrycoy.

A majority of the people responding to the SAP Concur survey are eager to travel, but they want to do it on their own terms, she says.

“They do feel that that face to face interaction is important — it's important to build those relationships with customers and partners and prospects and colleagues,” says Hrycoy.

“For anybody who's traveled probably in the last year, the first thing that you hear in a meeting is ‘Oh, my god, it's so good to be in person again.’”

Having done quite a bit of online learning during the pandemic, Lancaster says he found it “really impersonal.”

“It allows for people to be operating in a way that they can be really distracted — you just have no idea whether they're even listening, they could be doing anything. Oftentimes, without a camera on, you don't even know ‘Are they there?’ And the kind of feedback you get, the chat platforms are terrible… the whole platform is poorly developed for communication.”

As an example, Lancaster gave a keynote address for teachers in Virginia a couple of years ago, with about 800 teachers online.

“I tried to do my best to make it very engaging and full of passion,” he says, but he really wasn’t sure how well it resonated.

On the other hand, when Lancaster went to Virginia this year and again gave the keynote address, with about 800 on hand, he could feel the energy of people, and saw them get involved in activities.

“It wasn't just something where they sat and listened to me, they were actually up doing things… the physicality of it made such a huge difference. And I really had a sense for how things went — whether it was a flop or whether it was OK.”