5 Steps to Engaging Your Employees in Cost Savings
T&E spend tends to be one of the biggest cost centers for organizations, yet it is often among the last line items to be tackled when companies seek to cut costs and optimize spend. The reasons are simple: travel and entertainment directly affects employee morale, and strict controls and policies can cause friction. But a few smart initiatives can help you engage employees in a way that improves morale and turns them into champions for saving.
These 5 steps can make your employees willing participants in driving cost savings:
1. Educate
Help your employees understand why savings matter in the first place. Share with them the effect of travel on your company’s bottom line and how incremental savings can change the company’s financial trajectory for the better.
2. Set Goals
A company-level goal that everyone can work toward – and benefit from – builds a team mindset and gets employees sharing best practices and motivating their colleagues to save. Rocketrip customers typically set a goal of 20% savings upon implementing our platform (and actually tend to see closer to 30% savings).
3. Reward Good Behavior
Allowing employees to personally share in the savings they generate can go a very, very long way. At Rocketrip we’ve built our company on this premise, enabling employees to benefit firsthand from the savings they’re able to realize for their employer. When there is a direct incentive tied to cost-sensitive behavior, employees tend to go above and beyond to seek out ways to save. (Read our case studies to learn more.)
4. Set Examples at the Top
The importance of leadership as active participants in cost savings cannot be emphasized enough. Many of our customers serve as great examples of this rule. We’ve had CEOs stay with friends on business trips instead of splurging on hotels, and one of our clients’ executive teams pooled the personal rewards they earned from their savings to make a sizable contribution to the American Cancer Society. These stories spread like wildfire through organizations and build pride among employees, who in turn demonstrate similar behavior.
5. Celebrate Success
Recognize achievements, whether that means sending out company-wide emails with stories of above and beyond savings, honoring top savers at a company event, or granting special perks to the teams that make the biggest impact.
This post from Rocketrip CEO Dan Ruch originally appeared on Concur’s Thought Leadership Blog.
