Veteran road warriors are a flexible, resourceful, resilient, and solutions-oriented band of brothers and sisters. They have to be. Although it's true that travel is physically and emotionally demanding and, in some instances, potentially life-threatening (Think DVT, not terrorism.), they've learned what they can do to protect their health and sanity.

Some road warriors, as a recent New York Times article pointed out, have even wrested control over the travel process from "Who cares if you're inconvenienced?" airlines and poorly trained government staffers by driving instead of flying. But although they've overcome many obstacles to their health and fitness as they negotiate the landmine of travel today, there remains one major stressor many have yet to master.

"We has met the enemy, and he is us!"

Not all of the stress that surrounds business travel is generated by the physical process of travel and flying; the non-stop pressure to conduct business simultaneously in multiple time zones; or even by the ongoing sparring with airline, hotel, and car-rental reps for service-as-promised-but-not-delivered. Sometimes the biggest source of travel-related stress is not "out there" with a bunch of strangers who decide a traveler's fate. Sometimes, the biggest source of stress is more familiar and literally closer to home, namely a boss, other executives, and co-workers.  A serious threat to a traveler's well being—and a source that is rarely called to task for its stress-inducing role—is the company for whom they toil.

A road warrior isn't a fool. He'd prefer that a travel vendor treat him with respect, but he's not surprised when he's not treated well. Waging war with this foe is, sadly, a routine part of road life. But when you have to battle with your own organization to get the support you need, it's a whole other kind of stress. And ongoing stress, aside from taking a serious toll on an individual's physical and mental health, is also counter-productive and bad for business.

Are You Talking to Me?

Are you:

• A business owner, manager, or supervisor who sends employees out on business trips?

• Someone who determines or influences company travel policies?

• Someone who administers or enforces your firm's travel policy?
• A fellow employee who books, schedules, or otherwise arranges travel (or back-at-the-office support) for road warriors?
• A client or customer who is served by a company's business travelers?

If you answered "Yes" to one or more of the above, I'd like a few minutes of your time. I want to share some ideas and thoughts on how you can reduce stress and improve the overall quality of life for on-the-road staffers. And, in the process, help them be more effective and productive employees. Because supporting them is supporting your business.

You Can Make a Difference

If you can't personally initiate change, use your influence as a manager and executive to lobby for support and change at the highest levels of your company. Do whatever you can.

Ask What They Need

If you really want to help, ask your travelers—the real experts—what you can do to make business travel easier and more productive for them. Then, give them what they need. Or help them find a way to get it.

Solicit Their Input and Feedback—and Use It to Create Workable Travel Policies

Real stress is being forced to fly a carrier or deal with travel vendors that you know you can't rely on because somebody in corporate struck what seems, on paper, to be a good deal. Travel policies and vendor selection shouldn't be made in a vacuum—or by folks who don't travel regularly. Instead of paying huge fees to outside consultants or relying on the input of desk-bound execs who are wooed by travel vendors, solicit the advice of your in-house experts: the road warriors who travel all around the globe for you.

These frequent travelers have intimate, relevant, and timely information about airports, airlines, hotels, and rental car companies. They know what works and what doesn't and who to avoid and why. Listen to them and use their knowledge to help shape policies and select vendors.

OK. For this column's purposes, let's assume that a business traveler is creating an itinerary based solely on business needs, not a quest for frequent-flier miles or some other personal agenda. Let them, not a corporate travel department or support staff, specify preferred carriers and timing; hotels, and other vendors. Don't lock them into "one-size-fits-all" bookings that don't meet the needs of an individual business trip or reflect what's needed to get to a certain destination in a timely fashion.

Frequent travelers, especially those who regularly travel to the same destinations, are familiar with carrier schedules (and individual flights' on-time records), local hotels, and other travel-related details that can make or break an itinerary. In many cases, they'll know the lowest-cost carrier and the best ways to save money and time. So don't waste your company's fiscal and personnel resources: Make sure your support staff heeds their input.

The restrictions and rules for travel in some companies are so onerous, employees have to do battle with other staffers just to get out the door. Run interference when necessary but more than that, make sure your firm's policies address the real-life situations and needs that arise.

Clients call at 5 p.m. and expect travelers to head out that nite, whether or not some other department is available to approve a trip, provide cash, or gets tickets for the designated employee. It's about servicing clients and running a business, not being hand-tied by a policy.

In some cases, particularly with high-risk clients and high-stakes new business, you need the leeway to bend or avoid the rules so you can send someone out a day early or on business class to ensure that your staffer is physically prepared to represent you.

Cash advances, cell phone rentals, laptops, wireless access, etc. Don't make them wait or wade through paperwork. Approve or facilitate their requests.

If your firm doesn't have a corporate concierge who can look after mail, plants, newspapers, deliveries, and other needs for an absent traveler, hire local helpers. This service should be available to all travelers, but is especially useful for those who live alone.

Looking out for your firm's business travelers and ensuring that they get the support and resources they need to do their jobs isn't about pampering, perks, or favoritism. It's about investing in your company's "talent" bank—the people you trust to build, grow, sustain, and in some cases, salvage your business. If you see no connection between their health and well being and their productivity, don't believe it's your responsibility to ensure their safety and well being, or are reluctant to go to bat for your traveling staffers, you're adding to their stress.

Even if a traveler is fortunate enough to have management's backing, they may lack needed support elsewhere in the company. Even now, when travel is tinged with extra concern and stress, many unhappily chained-to-their-desk staffers still resent their high-flying co-workers. They show their dissatisfaction with biz travelers through subtle and not-so-subtle forms of sabotage and passive-aggressive behavior such as "forgetting" or being unavailable to assist their out-of-the-office counterparts. Managers need to ensure that on-site staffers support travelers as needed and understand that their cooperation is part of their own job requirements.

Travel is more than an expense item on a budget. It's about people and productivity and results. As road warriors know, there's a connection between how one travels and one's ability to do a job well while traveling and once you've arrived.

Financial bean counters and travel-policy "police," however, tend to see only numbers, policy exceptions, and "deviants."  Many don't make the connection between providing certain options (business class, ship-ahead luggage services, a hotel with a business center, etc.) and a traveler's ability to do their job well.

Help your corporate travel department staffers and whoever else is involved in administering and approving expenses understand what's needed to help employees be productive—and how it adds to the bottom line. Instead of looking at numbers out of context, help them understand that, say, putting someone in business class for an overseas trip when he's landing or servicing a multi-million dollar account is a good ROI for the expense.

The demands of a business should dictate who travels and when, but a wise manager knows that limiting travel to certain employees, while excluding others, can cause both short- and long-term problems. Where there is an option, share the travel and assign it to different staffers.

And if you or your company routinely send childless or unmarried and single workers out at the drop of the hat while thinking twice about whether to send (or excluding) married- or single-with-children employees, you may want to rethink your assignments.

Travel may be part of a a traveler's job description but that doesn’t mean they're exempt from your gratitude and appreciation. Take a minute and express it with a sincere and straightforward “Thank You.”  Thank you for representing our company, for getting the business, for enduring the disruptions in your private life, for tearing yourself away from your family and friends to hit the road and land or keep business for the firm.

Work, it's true, is not a democracy. Business has its own demands and travel may be a part of an employee's job. However, it doesn't mean you should assume someone can just pack up and leave on demand. A paycheck or fee purchases time and services—not a life.

Recognize that people have lives—and responsibilities—that have to be addressed before taking off. Give some consideration to a traveler's needs when assigning travel.

Few things are as stressful as unplanned changes to an already challenging travel itinerary. The airlines, however, do not have a monopoly on wreaking havoc via last-minute changes and delays.

There are legitimate reasons for changing schedules. Client and customer needs and requests top the list. There are even times when it makes good business sense to revise existing plans. But there are times when an individual business traveler's plans must be changed only because someone else (a manager, other executive, co-worker, etc.) has messed up.

Don't force a business traveler to change his itinerary because of your (or another employee's) problems, errors, mismanagement, or poor planning.

Invest in Your Staff’s Health and Well Being on the Road
A lot of companies have fitness centers and wellness programs. That’s nice, but meaningless when a staffer is miles and time zones away. If you really want to encourage healthy, fit travelers, reimburse them for working out at a local health club. Or pay for a session with a local trainer or to rent a bike or take a fitness class.

If someone’s just flown an exceptionally long trip or several trips during the week, pay for a massage or a chiropractic session.

And if you don’t already pay for membership in airline airport clubs for your heavy-duty flyers, pay up. A recent column by my colleague, Joe Brancatelli, advised flyers to pay for their own club memberships. As I told Joe, “If a company is sending you out there, they should make the investment in you."

Again, it’s not pampering. It’s an investment in your team—their efficiency and their ability to perform. If they look and feel bad, it’s going to affect your business and it's success. And not for the better.

If you send staffers around the globe, sign up for a service that can provide worldwide quality emergency medical care (including evacuation and repatriation) if needed. If you can't spring for the full range of services, ensure that your international travelers have some way to connect with reliable, English-speaking local medical professionals. Most important, make sure they don't have to pay for any services out of their own pockets.

If you can't or won't spring for such services, set aside a healthy portion of your travel budget for medical emergencies.  Accidents and worse can and do happen and you're responsible for emergency care. With no special insurance, the cost of evacuating an employee via an air ambulance, for example, can run you $10,000 and up.

At the very least, your health insurance plan should cover domestic travelers for accidents and emergencies when they're on the road.

Do you need your on-the-road staffers to focus on the work that requires them to be physically present somewhere away from the office? If you do, then stop sabotaging them by constant intrusions or expecting them to "be in the office" at the same time they are working on the road.

Even with cell phones, e-mail, and video-conferencing, they really can't conduct business as if they were "down the hall" while they're undertaking business elsewhere half-way across the country or continent. Using downtime while traveling to connect and catch up with the office is one thing, but trying to simultaneously deal with a client where you are in one location and the office in another part of the country or world is inefficient and counter-productive.

Trying to work on the fly, at the airport and in the air, is already pretty physically demanding. But it's even more stressful when biz travelers are forced to work, when they've arrived, on both local and office time.

Just because you can reach traveling staffers via phone or e-mail doesn't mean you should expect to be in contact or for travelers to work the equivalent of a full day at both the local and home office. Allow for turnaround and contact time based on their location and don't schedule phone calls or online meetings without considering local time and their schedules. It may be 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon where you are and the middle of the night the next day for your globe-trotting staffer. Let them sleep.

No matter where staffers travel, there are still only seven days in a week and 24 hours in a day (although you occasionally win or lose a day with international travel). People still need time to eat and sleep, albeit even for a few hours.

Ask your travelers what constitutes a "reward" to them. (You may not be able to come up with a bonus or salary increase, but there are affordable alternatives.) Is it an extra day to work at home or a comp day off after very extensive travel?

Would they like to be eligible for a drawing for prizes (a big-screen TV, local golf club membership, etc.) that they’ve chosen? How about a couple of free meals at local eateries?  A paid weekend trip for a spouse to join them at the end of a big trip?

The key here is finding out what works for them, not relying on some generic reward that means nothing to the receiver.

Show your appreciation in ways that are meaningful to an individual traveler and don't wait till they are back in the office to reward them: Treat them to an in-room movie. A round of golf. A nite at the theater.