This time of year, there are always a ton of questions about how to manage travel with your staff. If you’re looking at new ideas and effective policies for paying your staff while at a competition, check out How to Pay Coaches for Competitions. If you’re looking at how to most effectively manage travel accommodations for your coaches though, you’ve come to the right place.

Things can get tricky when your staff has extenuating circumstances such as: 

  1. Family members who are part of the program
  2. Family members who are not part of the program but enjoy attending competitions
  3. Full-time jobs that take precedence and occasionally alter the ability to travel with everyone else

Here, I’ll give you three tips for ensuring you’ve got your policies in place when it comes to competition travel in each of these situations. 

    1. You should be booking travel arrangements. It’s important that you maintain your budget for hotel, airfare, airport parking, etc. As a result, we book all arrangements. If a coach were to want a different hotel or flight, we’d portion out what it would have cost us to have her in our room or on our flight, and we’d reimburse her the difference. 
    2. You should have a policy in place for your staff’s family. In our first few years, I just couldn’t have afforded to pay for family members who are not part of our program to attend an event. In season 10, we’ve built enough profit into our program that if a family member wanted to attend, I’d offer any accommodations that fit our budget. Why? I want our staff’s family to feel as loyal to our program as I want the staff member to be. Have you ever had a spouse who didn’t support a hobby or habit? I don’t want my staff to ever feel the pull between family and work, so when possible – we accommodate. That said, it’s a little different if you have a child in our program and you would have been attending as a parent anyway. In the past, I’ve portioned out their travel expenses and reimbursed the staff member for those. The additional expenses for their child are ones they would have incurred in youth sports anyway, so we don’t reimburse for the child. You may not fully agree with my policies, and that’s OK. My point here is that it’s important you have policies in place and that your staff is clear on those policies.
    3. Staff shouldn’t be paying out of pocket. If a staff member is coaching while at a competition, regardless of if he/she has a child in the program, they need to be reimbursed for their travel expenses, parking, etc. If they could have traveled with other coaches and it would have saved money, you can absolutely portion that out and reimburse accordingly. But, you have legal obligations to take care of any mandatory expenses an employee incurs on behalf of their job.

I often hear people say that they can’t afford to pay for staff’s hotels, mileage (or gas), parking, background checks, etc. If that’s the case, I’ve got some hard news for you: You shouldn’t be attending events that require you to do this. If you can’t afford to take care of your staff, you’ve missed some major budgeting steps along the way, and I encourage you to check out our packets for all star budgeting (reply to this email if you’re interested, and I can send the link). 

I encourage you to review your policies. If your staff are paying out of pocket, it’s going to place a burden on their family. They shouldn’t be working for free, nor should they be paying for mandatory work travel. Take care of your staff and you’ll see a dramatic shift in staff culture and loyalty to your program.