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Navigating The Stresses Of Traveling With Employees

Traveling for business with your employees is a great way to build bonds with your team outside of the usual office environment. However, company travel doesn’t always go smoothly, which is partly because a lot of business owners struggle to set the right tone for corporate travel.


To ensure that the right etiquette is set for your trip, it’s vital that you make it clear to your team what you expect from the start. It’s important to act in a professional manner at all times, working as productively as you would if you were at the office, without being overly harsh with your team members and implementing too many strict rules.


It's important to ensure that you aren’t sending the wrong message to your employees while traveling with them. With that in mind, the question is, how can you strike the perfect balance between professionalism and friendship while traveling with your team?



Set the tone early


Before jetting off, it’s important to make it clear what you expect from the team that you are traveling with. Outline what the trip will consist of, what the working hours will be, and what you expect from each of your employees while you are traveling for work. It’s a good idea to make it clear what responsibilities each team member has as this will help to make corporate travel a little less stressful for everyone. Give each employee a task, such as booking the transfers to and from the airport, ensuring that any notes are packed ready for meetings, or making meal reservations for the week. You want to make it clear from the start what your expectations are for your team.

Be a good example


Your team will look to you for advice about how to behave while traveling for business. You will find that your employees will look to you for cues about every aspect of business travel, from how to dress to what to spend their time on the flight doing. As the owner of the business, it’s up to you to decide what the rules will be for your trip, but just bear in mind that your employees will copy your behaviour, so think before you act and realise the impact your actions can have on your team.


Make it clear it’s not a vacation


While there’s nothing wrong with having a few beers over dinner, it’s worth thinking about where the line should be. It’s one thing to have a couple of drinks with your team to celebrate a day well spent, but it’s completely another for your employees to drink too much and end up making fools of themselves. What you don’t want to do is make things so casual that the work dynamic goes out of the window. Don’t make the mistake of being overly friendly with your team, because that’s where issues with discipline can come into play.


If traveling with your team for business is going to be successful, it pays to ensure that you strike the perfect balance between friendship and professionalism from the get-go.

Business Daily Media