What the millennial employee wants in a travel program

The dictionary refers to millennials as the group of people born between 1981 and the late 90s. But the unofficial definition probably sounds something like: a group of people who prefer working on beanbags than in cubicles, and who see wifi as a fundamental human right. Throw in buzzwords like “instant gratification” and “freedom of choice” and voila! Millennial.

This should come as no surprise, especially since millennials are a bunch who can’t be cooped up in a 9–5 cubicle farm. Plus, with their tech-savviness and worldliness, they can add a great deal of value to work trips. And the key to harnessing their potential as business travellers? A conducive travel program that plays to their strengths.

While Gen X is contented with making all-inclusive arrangements through travel agencies, you would be hard pressed to find a millennial onboard a sightseeing coach or following a yellow flag on a guided tour.

As a company’s organisational culture adapts to millennials, so must its policies. With travel opportunities playing a huge role in employee motivation and talent retention, it’s about time to give your travel program an update.

If your staff has to make bookings through a single travel agency or within restrictions like an overly complicated procedure, it may be a sign that your travel program is more Gen X than millennial-skewed.

Numerous surveys show that corporate processes of booking travel take 30 minutes to more than an hour. This duration is unheard of for a group of people who are used to looking up the cheapest flights in a matter of seconds on a mobile app and finding hotels in the CBD with a few clicks on an interactive map.

Maybe your company’s long booking process has been set in stone from the very beginning, or perhaps it’s a result of longstanding working relationships between the company and external vendors. But, either way, if your employees have outgrown it, it’s already obsolete.

Apart from efficiency, more flexibility also means greater ownership of the business trip for the employee and more economical choices for the company. You can surely trust a millennial to suss out the most value-for-money deals. They are the leading authority on short trips and weekend getaways, remember?

Hotel chains have taken a backseat with the advent of platforms like Airbnb, compounded with the millennials’ appetite for novel places and experiences. In the same way, they have easily done away with shuttles and transfers, with shared car services like Grab offering hassle-free transportation at their fingertips.

When has a millennial called up an airline to book a flight? Never. After all, this is a generation that can hardly recall a time before the Internet. But even though you now make all your flight bookings online, you may still be guilty of obsolete practices that young employees have already outgrown.

While there’s no hard and fast rule for acceding to bleisure requests, young companies — the same folks who embrace work-from-home arrangements — are far more likely to approach it from a work-life balance perspective. Letting employees ride on a work trip for some well-deserved downtime goes a long way to improve their morale and satisfaction.

By the end of next year, millennials will make up more than half of the workforce worldwide, and contribute significantly to business travel spending. For the flak they sometimes get for being “entitled” and “idealistic”, millennials are also some of the most driven and creative individuals of our time, and it is up to a company to harness their merits.

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