According to recent research from Webexpenses, employees in Australia spend an average of 37 minutes each month managing their expenses. Despite the digital transformation of the workspace, it seems employee expenses are an area that’s lagging behind. Excel spreadsheets and paper receipts still reign supreme, with an end-of-the-month deadline for staff to send everything over. And, if they don’t find the time, there’s always next month.
Adding an extra layer of complexity is the growing remote workforce – freelancers, homeworkers and business travellers. Without having access to the same hardware as in-house staff – such as office phones, on-site Wi-Fi and desk space – these workers often blur their work expenses with their personal ones (like making business calls under their personal phone contract).
Managing expenses for increasingly disparate teams can be a complex task. It adds to the workload for finance directors who need to encourage employees to file cumbersome expense reports (when they’ve lost half their paper receipts) and nudge management to sign these off in a timely manner – even harder when your colleagues aren’t working under the same roof. In order to stay in control – and potentially reduce expenses by ironing out inefficiencies – finance directors need to move to a more relevant, digital, streamlined and real-time system for keeping on top of expenses – a vital step in reducing business costs.
It all starts with a strict review of your company’s expense policy. How clearly does it reflect the working patterns and activities of your current workforce? How biased is it towards the activities of in-house staff, rather than those based elsewhere?
A good expenses policy stipulates how employees should pay for any expense incurred, and explain when and why employees may need to pay out of their own pockets and be reimbursed later. It should show employees which expense categories they can claim under (transport, meals, hardware, communications), and the maximum amount. And these rules should be applicable to each member of the workforce – including remote workers.
However, there are other expenses to consider for remote workers. These employees may have additional expenses to create an out-of-office work environment, like software subscriptions, a second monitor for their PC, or a portable Wi-Fi hub for working on the move. This is also a useful way of creating a physical boundary between remote employees’ personal and business activity, which brings clarity for managing expenses. For example, it may be worth equipping remote employees with a business phone, so there’s no confusion between work and leisure activity from their smartphone, or stating in the expense policy that all business calls must be made over WhatsApp or Skype where possible. As times change, finance directors will find the need to introduce new expenses that are covered for remote workers to maximise their productivity. Rather than seeing an expense policy as set in stone, it’s important to keep revisiting it and updating it as the tools and needs of remote employees change.
If your business has not yet made the move to paper-free expense management, the range of expense-management software now available for businesses is staggering. Aside from saving employees time when it comes to filing expense reports – and meaning the end of paper receipts – digital expense management software is great for remote workers, as it lets them upload their expenses while they’re on the road or working outside of the office. It also lets finance directors move closer to a culture of real-time expense validation and reimbursement – where they need only press a button to approve and pay back staff expenses straight away.
Finance directors may also want to explore flexible workspace as a cost-effective, simple solution to managing the expenses of remote workers. Offering staff access to flexspace removes some of the financial ambiguities of claiming expenses when working from home. At flexible office locations, Wi-Fi, phone calls, coffee, printing, desk space, meeting space and IT support are all available under one roof – and payable via a single bill. Giving remote workers access to a flexspace location near to where they live, or where they need to be to meet clients, might well prove to be a wise financial decision as the flexible working revolution continues to rise.
Find more tips for managing remote workers at www.iwgplc.com
