We offer daily and weekend allowance to our employees during their overseas travel. This is apart from covering board, lodge and other official expenses. The daily allowance is anything between USD 20 per day to USD 60 per day depending upon the grade of the employee. During weekend, starting Friday evening to Monday mornings , he can avail of weekend allowance. Here we have categorised it according to the cost of living in various countries. USA, Western Europe, Japan come under A category. Turkey, South America, Southern and West Africa, Hong Kong and Singapore come under B category and the allowance is marginally lower than A. The lowest is C category where rest of the countries are placed.
The idea behind giving them these allowances is to ensure that the employees can incur costs on buying some memorabilia for his family do some shopping for himself and his loved ones without feeling the pinch, go around the city, take a city tour, have a few drinks without locking himself in the room doing nothing. This helps as a tool of motivation and also gives a feel good factor.
Thought I must share this with you and this could give some insight behind such practices in good corporates.