Consider this hypothetical scenario: You work in the travel industry — and you are a corporate card user.
After a hard day of serving customers, you find yourself in your next port of call. Exhausted, you drag yourself to the nearest hotel, and with your corporate card in hand, you check in.
Nearly two months later, you get a call from your supervisor, and she’s clearly upset. She informs you that you are currently under investigation for improper card usage. Specifically, it’s because you used your corporate card for that hotel stay.
Now you find yourself in a pickle, and you have no clue what you did wrong.
In a corporate card program, company policies and procedures matter
What did go wrong? Travel employees do need to stay overnight at a hotel, and as such, hotel accommodations are work-related expenses. There’s nothing insidious about that, at least on the surface. But when one digs deeper, it’s easy to see that it’s not the use of the corporate card per se but how it’s been used that has prompted the investigation.
That’s because — no matter the industry — company policies and procedures do matter, and they are at the foundation of any organization’s card program. Cardholders who don’t know that information are the cracks in that foundation.
Cardholder education and training make all the difference
In this particular scenario, many questions arise: Was the hotel you chose approved for corporate card use? Was the nightly rate too high? Were corporate cards an approved means of reimbursing traveling expenses for this company?
To the uneducated, such card usage seems legitimate. And herein lies the solution to misuse — education. Because the biggest question that remains from this proposed situation is this: How well, if at all, were you as the employee educated on the correct use of your card?
While this scenario is fictional, it sheds light on the issue of corporate card misuse. It illustrates the importance of training users and equipping them to use cards correctly. Throughout the real business world, it would be completely reasonable to find similar transactions take place purely out of ignorance on the part of the cardholder, rather than out of any sort of criminal intent.
There’s a clear correlation that can be and must be drawn between user misuse and user education. Well-meaning employees may be misusing corporate cards simply because they don’t know or don’t understand company policies and procedures.
Both the company and the employee suffer from lack of cardholder training
Misuse due to ignorance can be a sad state of affairs, for both the company and the employees charged with the misuse. In such a situation, the employees at fault don’t mean any harm. They might believe wholeheartedly that their behavior with corporate cards is right and just. It’s difficult to take any action against an employee accused of misuse who responds, “But I didn’t know!” to such allegations — especially if cracks in the company’s card program truly allowed for policy ambiguity.
Resist the temptation to skip cardholder training
Without a doubt, it’s easy and tempting to side-step training when implementing a card program. You can hand out a card and provide a link to the company card policy, and call it a day. But handling a card program this way almost ensures missteps by users who make assumptions about its policies and procedures. Eventually, after several errors, executives scratch the program due to loss of funds and disfavor. Or, it will need go back to the square one of implementation with the proper training anyway.
There’s an old saying: “Knowledge is power.” For corporate card users and the company for which they work, being “in the know” about policies and procedures can make all the difference in creating a successful card program.
Use training to reign in misuse
Before your own company’s card program loses control of policies and procedures followed due to ignorance on the part of its users, consider implementing your own training program. TrainingWISE, Card Integrity’s cardholder training service, allows for full customization. This creates a unique training program that integrates your company’s specific policies and procedures. There will be no doubt that your company took the steps necessary to educate your employees regarding proper use of cards for your business. Following up with DataWISE — Card Integrity’s expense monitoring system — lets you know just how well your cardholders are doing with the training they’ve received.
Discover 24 Commercial Card Training Best Practices
The best practices above are just a few of the ones that we’ve compiled for procurement professionals. Download the free eGuide below, Cardholder Training Best Practices, to see all 24 card policy training tips. Included are:
- Additional tips to increase engagement
- Insights into tracking training outcomes
- Gamification and quiz examples
- And much more!
