Tips, some good and some bad, for eating cheap while traveling are easy to come by all over the internet. Suggestions for cheap food include taking double advantage of free hotel breakfast by saving a banana, apple, or yogurt for lunch. Other suggestions are stopping by the grocery store to pick up bread and peanut butter for sandwiches or even eating room-temperature beans out of a can. An even worse suggestion is eating off the dollar menu at a fast food restaurant.
However, actually using that per diem to make healthy choices can be a real challenge for employees. Some employees say that they stay healthy by finding the nearest Chipotle or salad joint, but that can be out of the way and can get boring for every meal every day.
According to a 2015 article titled “A Darker Side of Hypermobility,” frequent business travelers get “fewer opportunities for physical exercise, [and have] worse eating habits than when at home.” It seems that travelers are often more concerned with their immediate work-related stresses over the long-term needs of their body and their health.
What it comes down to isn't that fact that healthy food is more expensive. Instead, the problem is that unhealthy food is so cheap, in terms of price and in terms of the time it takes to go out, find out the food, get it quickly, and eat it quickly.
Some suggestions that HR leaders might want to consider bringing to their next meeting involve a "carrot and stick" approach, according to Catherine Richards, associate director at a healthcare analytics company: “If the company reimburses employees for meals while traveling, reimbursement rates could be tied to dietary quality. A ‘stick’ approach might be to reimburse high–energy density food meals at a below cost rate, while a ‘carrot’ approach might be to reimburse healthy meals at an above cost rate.”
Would it be possible to reimburse employees at different rates depending on the choices they make? How is this enforceable and how can it be managed fairly and effectively? The goal, after all, isn't to burden HR with tracking what might be deemed as healthy vs. unhealthy food. Besides, that might just be a fight waiting to happen if an employee feels that they ate healthily and policy says that they didn't. The whole purpose of a per diem is to simplify and reduce administrative costs, so perhaps this approach won't work in practice.
Instead, what HR can do is provide education about stress, travel, and eating. How to incentivize employees to attend sessions surrounding these topics is another matter, of course. Perhaps HR's role can be to educate where possible, both employees and management, about the toll of travel on the body. Richards’s other advice is to provide resources for employees to decrease the health consequences of travel other than those associated with food. She says, “given the link between business travel and work stress and between stress and diet and obesity, stress management classes and workshops may have utility in reducing the impact of business travel on health.”
If you're looking for a reimbursement solution, check out DATABASICS Expense.
For more information on the DATABASICS Time & Expense solutions, contact us, or call (800) 599-0434.
DATABASICS provides cloud-based, next generation Expense Reporting, P-Card Management, Timesheet Management, Leave Management, and Invoice Processing automation. Specializing in meeting the most rigorous requirements, DATABASICS offers the highest level of service to its customers around the world.
DATABASICS is relied upon by leading organizations representing all the major sectors of the global economy: financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, research, retail, engineering, nonprofits/NGOs, technology, federal contractors, and other sectors.
Connect with DATABASICS: LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. DATABASICS is headquartered in Reston, VA.
