When Playboy tries to bring down costs by minimizing Travel and Entertainment expenses of employees, it DOES show that we are undergoing trying times. But believe it or not, it is true. Travel and Entertainment expenditure is the second largest expenditure for most companies, after salaries. But trying to reduce it is easier said than done as clients, relations and potential prospects cannot be ignored. But what you CAN DO is to limit the amount of travel in a whole lot of ways. Use video-conferencing as an alternative to travel for meetings. Day trips instead of overnight stays. Train and car travel instead of shorter flights. Minimise travel privileges such as First/Business class tickets to a bare minimum. A closer tab on the corporate frequent-flyer programme of airlines, which not only allow the employees to earn miles on their individual loyalty programs, but enable the company to earn miles too and redeem against free tickets later on.

Traditional measures of hiring freezes, pay reductions and layoffs have been done to death, during this period of slow growth. It is high time to look at Travel Expenses too – an area which doesn’t hit your employees so much if there are reductions!

Via Financial Week