Employees who travel a lot on business are seeing more of some perks and less of others.
According to the 2017 Employee Benefits Survey from the Society for Human Resource Management, the already small percentage of companies which pay for a spouse's travel has fallen substantially from 7 percent in 2013 to just 2 percent in 2017.
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Fewer of those employees who needed to phone home while away from those non-traveling spouses are getting reimbursed for personal phone calls they make while traveling on business, the survey finds. While in 2013 44 percent of businesses would reimburse employees for personal calls, in 2017 that's fallen to 36 percent. The survey points out, however, the cause may be due to most employees having personal or business cell phones. (It's also possible the rise in cell plans which don't charge for long-distance calls could have an impact on this figure.)
Reimbursement for care for those left at home is pretty negligible. In 2013 2 percent of employers would reimburse an employee for child care expenses, 1 percent would pay for pet care, and nobody paid for eldercare expenses. Today kids have moved down the priority list while pets have moved up. It's still minuscule, but 1 percent of companies these days will reimburse those costs. Does that mean pet parents are on equal footing with human parents?
Companies do, however, still reimburse employees for internet access on business travel, with 59 percent doing so. Still, in 2013 61 percent reimbursed employees for connectivity.
And of course there's the little matter of food. Compared with 2013, when just 70 percent of companies offered per diem or meal reimbursement, that's risen to 76 percent in 2017. Workers resorting to the minibar for snacks better be prepared to pay the tab themselves; although even in 2013 not many employers would fork it over for that — just 10 percent did so — now that's dropped to 9 percent. Ditto pay-per-view movies in the room; reimbursement for those dropped from 5 percent in 2013 to 4 percent today.
Reimbursement for getting to and from the airport depends, a little, on whether employees use their own car, since 87 percent of companies will reimburse for taxis or parking, but just 80 percent allow for mileage reimbursement for the use of a personal car to travel to and from the airport.
And the most common travel perks? Allowing employees to keep hotel points (66 percent, down from 69 percent in 2013) and frequent flyer miles (65 percent, also down from 69 percent in 2013).
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