Why too much travel is not good to employee and company ?

One of the most important aspect for an organisation is to be in regular touch with customers / vendors / accounts through various ways and what they believe the most productive being the official face-face meetings. 

But as companies are expanding their markets, targets, reaching out to different level of contacts, with existing resource. This increases the travel time of employees and will only bring down the productivity level of each employee. This is more applicable to Sales, Marketing, Service, Purchases departments who are always on the move.

Too much travelling will drain out the 'physical' and 'mental' energy of your employees. Many times the objective of the visit gets diluted due these drained out energies. According to a survey carried out in US with around 2,000 Americans, where 91% of the respondents agreed that too much time away from work had consequences on work productivity, also 70% of the respondents said it could also result in divorce or failed relationships which again would impact the work quality. 

An official travelling usually has to deal with : 

1. Preparation for the visit. 

Prior to visit, an employee MUST accumulate facts and figures, to prepare for different possible scenarios and accordingly act.  The quality of data and preparation depreciates when travelling gets too much and therefore, failing to achieve the objective. Especially when it is multiple customers / vendors / accounts handling.

2. Increased Work load.  

While on the move, an employee continues to get loaded with operational tasks as well, such as preparing of reports, following up on pending tasks, preparing of travel bills, unattended emails pile up. This would impact the productivity of the employee when there aren't frequent gaps between the travel to allow employee to catch up on other activities. Thus such work creeps into their 'personal' time and thus disturbing the 'work-life' balance. 

3. Reduced health conditions

There are many reasons which can be attributed to reduced health.

a. Also, travelling results in un-scheduled lunch / dinner timings which any doctor will confirm that un-regular meal patterns will have impact on health of a person. I do have short story from my own experience to share. When i was a making presentation to management, the Outlook calendar popped up message with Subject "LUNCH" and immediately, one of top manager questioned the blocking of calendar with subject "LUNCH". I clarified, that this was to people not block or sending meetings during LUNCH timings. Immediately, he said "You don't then belong to sales, when you don't have regular lunch time."

b. From close a decade experience, have noticed that usually a person tends to consume more alcohol when travelling in comparison to same person when not travelling. This was strengthened with survey too, bringing out similar results, 71% of Americans believed that people drink higher when away. 

Then how can we make work travel less stressful ?  Here are some of "Mythoughts"

1. Prioritise the visits and delegate where unimportant.  

2. Stick to less fatty foods and eat good healthy food. Keep a watch on what you eat.  

3. Make use of Technology. There are many video conferencing, webex, Skype etc.. which can be used well to reduce travel.  

4. Talk to your Manager / Mentor when you believe that your travel is taking a hit on your personal matters. Look to shift around to other roles. 

5. Sometimes it is important to take a break after a long travel. 

Do share in your thoughts ! Have you experience any travel burnout ?