Sitting with a beer in the reception area of Dartford’s Holiday Inn Express, it’s interesting to watch them check in. Various degrees of branded work gear, high vis, the odd hard hat, tools / no tools. It was about 4.00, and liveried vans were finding their spots in the car park.
Some were clearly well-versed in safe parking techniques, parking tightly back-to-back or top and tailed side to side for side loaders, in plain view and full sight on CCTV.
Back inside, reception is getting busier and again you can tell those new to the game of ‘working away’ and those for whom it was as natural as night and day.
Check-in for newbies can be quite stressful. After working a full-on day in unfamiliar territory – ‘next’ … now what?
Create a clear Travel Policy
…and educate your employees.
When sending your guys away, make sure their travel, work, stay and subsistence rules are carefully explained and well-coordinated with the hotel they’re staying at. Booking confirmation with clear pre-payment and subsistence approval should be clear to both the receptionist and your employees.
Have you pre-arranged meals and cost limits with the hotel or are your guys paying and reclaiming? Do you have alcohol limits, or perhaps you prefer a ‘dry ship’ for engineers on tour?
Have you briefed them what their limits are and to keep their receipts to make re-claims easy for all?
The last column applies to overnighting staff.
What is a Subsistence Allowance?
Subsistence allowance is the money given to employees to cover business expenses incurred as a result of performing their work duties. This includes meals and drinks, accommodation, car parking charges and more. Put simply, subsistence refers to the cost of sustaining an employee when they’re travelling for business.
The main stipulations required to claim meal expenses are:
- The cost of food or drink must be incurred after the business trip has started
- The trip must be beyond their usual commute and be done as part of official business
- The journey must take the employee away from their normal place of work for 5 hours or more.
As of April 2019, HMRC no longer requires businesses to provide receipts for every cost incurred as part of a business journey. This means a lot less reimbursement paperwork for business owners, finance teams and claimants.
Now businesses can claim a set amount for each day of travel and only need to demonstrate that an employee has incurred some kind of expense during their business trip. So, if an employee on a business trip eats three meals, they only need to provide proof (a receipt) for the evening meal, for example.
JGF – Working Away
We take all of these factors into account.
Feedback from the away teams helps refine the process. The two main things they appreciate are:
- A good briefing on the location and check-in process.
- A well-briefed hotel or accommodation reception.
- Yes, a third did pop up in a tongue-in-cheek question – Do we need to check our passports north of Watford?!!!
Not at the time of writing, but there are so many other things to consider. There is no bigger question than … do the guys want to work away?
This may not have been an issue at the time of their employment into the growing, hard-working, skilled JGF Team. Now, the question is clearly asked as part of new recruitment policy.
We will not schedule staff to work away if it doesn’t suit their personal lives. Some have young families to think of – is that a factor for being first in the queue though, or for staying at home.
Anything for a good night’s sleep.
Accommodation
All of the main ‘budget’ chains have good working relations with companies who regularly manage engineering teams working away. Some can be more ‘user friendly’ than others but all do have clear policy guidelines. Group discounts do vary chain to chain and of course for the size of the budget associated with corporate guests.
Let’s look at other options too:
Airbnb For Contractors
They say: “You can use us for business trips, too. Mark a booking as a business trip by selecting Is this a work trip? during checkout. This way, you can add trip notes that’ll be sent to the person who manages your company’s travel. You’ll also get a receipt from us in your work inbox.”
Trade Stays
They provide “…serviced accommodation for contractors with a hotel suite experience at excellent prices. This extremely flexible accommodation service offers complete properties for contractors to stay in, that are frequently cleaned, serviced and maintained, allowing your team a far more comfortable, content and spacious experience in comparison to your standard hotel.
They allow the perfect environment for your teams to wind down after a hard day’s work, in addition to allowing the team to bond far more effectively in their own space. The fully fitted kitchen offers your team a range of flexibility in their catering choices, in comparison to relying on the local pub or restaurant meals, ultimately leading to fewer expenses.” Video:
Beds for Builders
Is another web hub providing advertising opportunity to bed and breakfast, houses, pubs, hotels, guest houses and serviced apartments to help release different types of non-chain accommodation into the contractor network.
The way they recruit accommodation reflects to possible benefits to businesses, like ours, who are now in demand further afield – watch the video: