Short-notice service trips, made compliant: How ENERTRAG streamlined international business travel and workations with WorkFlex

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🔎 ABOUT ENERTRAG

A global renewable energy group brings structure to international travel across teams

ENERTRAG has been active in renewable energy for more than 25 years and operates as a corporate group with locations worldwide. International travel is part of daily operations and comes in different forms. From well-planned business trips to very short-notice travel, especially in the service area when colleagues need to go abroad quickly, for example to Poland or France, to work on turbines.

As ENERTRAG became more international, the volume of cross-border travel increased. At the same time, the administrative requirements surrounding international travel became more demanding, particularly when official documents had to be issued under tight timelines.

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“My personal key moment was a business trip to France, when a SIPSI notification had to be issued at very short notice, an official document required by the French authorities. There was extremely little time, which made the process error-prone and led to a lot of additional costs for us.”

‍– Anne Herglotz, HR Management & IT Solution, ENERTRAG

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🔥 CHALLENGE

Short-notice travel and manual handling increased pressure on HR and compliance

ENERTRAG needed a reliable way to handle international business travel and other trips abroad correctly and to send employees abroad safely, even when timelines were tight:

• Short-notice trips: ENERTRAG sees both planned travel and urgent travel, especially in service, when colleagues have to travel quickly to do work on turbines abroad.
• Time-critical certificates: A key tipping point was a business trip to France where an SIPSI notification had to be prepared quickly for the authorities. There was very little time, it was error-prone, and it led to significant additional costs.
• Limited visibility: HR didn’t always have full transparency into who was traveling where and when, creating grey areas and reactive handling.
• High manual workload: Without a dedicated solution, individual cases could take a significant amount of time and were difficult to scale when multiple requests came in at once.

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🎉 SOLUTION

WorkFlex convinced ENERTRAG with usability and automated risk assessment

After researching the market and seeing strong customer feedback, ENERTRAG chose WorkFlex. The deciding factor was user-friendliness - not only for HR admins, but also for employees and managers navigating the process.

• User-friendly interface: “Not only the administrators, but also employees and managers can navigate through it easily.”
• Automated risk assessment: WorkFlex creates the risk analysis, helping HR process requests much faster.
• Workations introduced as a benefit: With WorkFlex, ENERTRAG introduced workations, allowing employees to work abroad voluntarily for up to 20 days per year within Europe or from their home country.
• Rollout support incl. internal communication: ENERTRAG highlighted the support during introduction - what to present to the executive board, what to share with the works council, and what to tell employees.

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“So we chose WorkFlex because we were convinced by its user-friendliness.”
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‍– Anne Herglotz, HR Management & IT Solution, ENERTRAG

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🎯 BENEFITS

Faster processing, better tracking, and a process employees actually use

Since introducing WorkFlex, ENERTRAG has seen clear improvements across international business travel and workations:

• Significantly faster processing in HR: “If I used to spend almost a whole morning on one employee, I could probably process around ten such requests now, because WorkFlex creates the risk analysis for me.”
• ‍Strong workation adoption: Since March 2024, ENERTRAG has received over 200 workation requests, with around 170 approved showing high usage. Business trips take place in much higher volumes on top.
• More transparency and reporting: HR can report and track travel more reliably, which previously felt like a grey area.
• Less ad-hoc pressure, more predictable workflows: Cases no longer “come in so ad hoc,” and HR can work more planfully thanks to clear, transparent workflows.
• Faster, more efficient, safer international travel overall: “The whole area of international travel has simply become faster, more efficient and safer.”

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“What I found really great was that they also supported us in the rollout, especially with internal communication. In the end, it was a complete all-round care package.”

– Anne Herglotz, HR Management & IT Solution, ENERTRAG