Business traveling for any reason is especially stressful.
These kinds of travels can cause high-pressure unhealthy diets, lack of exercise, bad sleeping habits, and even drink and smoke more.
Companies have a duty of care to ensure the health and safety of their traveling employees.
Here are some tips on how to stress out of business travel:
- Plan ahead to save time. Write a travel checklist, the more details you have about your trio, the better.
- Use travel apps. Use travel apps to help you find restaurants, hotels, where to go if you have some free time, etc. There are also apps that can help you to capture and itemize receipts, mileage, and other expenses. This will help you to keep everything organized and reduce stress during your trip.
- Clarify expectations with your supervisor or manager. Before your trip, meet with your supervisor to set clear goals and objectives. If you have any question or something important you want to talk about with your manager, connect as often as possible while you’re away.
- Take advantage of downtime. Spending every single moment of your trip on work will only increase the stress of your trip. Use some time for yourself, try to unplug, recharge and explore when possible.
- Work while you’re traveling. Getting to your destination must take hours, if you have some downtime on a long flight or train ride, why not get ahead on some work? Maybe you don’t have all the resources you need, but if you can do some of the backlogged work before you arrive, it may reduce stress.
Get enough sleep. This is always a good tip, no matter what situation we are talking about, but it’s especially relevant when you travel. Not sleeping can raise stress levels and reduce your cognitive function. It can be difficult to have a good and healthy sleep while you travel, but making the effort will go a long way in reducing stress.
