Inaugural ‘Work Travel & Reimbursement Spotlight Survey’ Released

Digital publication shows who will, and won’t prepay for employees’ personal travel. Zweig Group has released the first of its Spotlight Surveys series, Work Travel & Reimbursement. This full-color digital product offers an in-depth look at firms’ policies related to business-travel reimbursement at a fraction of the cost of Zweig Group’s full-length survey products. “The Spotlight Surveys series is a little more reader-friendly, I think,” said Andrea Bennett, Zweig Group’s research and publications manager. “Not only is the information more targeted, meaning that the topics covered are more succinctly linked, but also the digital format allows us to create a full-color product, which makes for a more pleasurable reading experience, in general.” “We’ve also used this inaugural Work Travel & Reimbursement Survey to implement some new data breakdowns that readers of other surveys have requested,” she said. “For addition, readers will be able to look and see the exact percentage of respondents that offer specific engineering services, in addition to firms’ broad markets within the industry.” Among the most interesting findings of the Spotlight Survey relates to firms’ willingness to provide front-end coverage of employees’ personal travel costs conducted in conjunction with business travel, with either the expectation of repayment or the deduction of the costs from the employees next paycheck. “It was striking to me how many firms – about 16 percent – said that they would prepay for employees’ personal travel expenses when that travel is conducted in conjunction with business travel. To me, that says that A/E/P and environmental firms really trust their employees, especially the almost 11 percent that allow the employee to repay them at a later date, versus deducting the amount from their paychecks, which happens at about 5 percent of firms.” Firms in the architecture/interiors (67 percent), single-discipline engineering (20 percent) and multidiscipline engineering (11 percent) are most likely to prepay for employees’ personal travel expenses with the expectation of being repaid later. They are most likely to be based in the Middle Atlantic (100 percent), North Central (7 percent), and/or South Atlantic (13 percent) regions and to have less than 50 (61 percent) employees. “Though it’s interesting to note where these practices are taking place, it’s almost more interesting to see where they aren’t,” Bennett said. For example, no fast-growth firms (those that have experienced an annual revenue/staff growth of 20 percent or more over the past three years) report prepaying for employees’ personal travel expenses, and only 14 percent of very high profit firms (those with an annual net pre-tax, pre-bonus profit on net service revenue of 15 percent or more over the past three years) report doing so. “We can only report on correlation,” Bennett cautioned, “but these numbers seem to indicate that growing firms are less likely than firms overall to extend this ‘prepay option’ to their employees. But, of course, each firm must make its decision based on what’s best for it and its staff.” The inaugural Work Travel & Reimbursement Survey is available for purchase at zweiggroup.net/sandbox/survey.php for $250. Professionals who participate in a Zweig Group survey questionnaire are also eligible for a 50 or 60 percent discount on the purchase of a survey of their choosing. For more information, call 800.466.6275, email research@zweiggroup.com, or visit zweiggroup.net/sandbox/survey.php.