I had this happen to me once - I left a company after they had booked a lot of us to travel to LHR for the annual corporate gathering. The ticket was on VS economy and when I left, since I was no longer attending the event, the ticket stayed in my name but the company asked me to reimburse them for the cost (about $675 IIRC). Kinda tacky but also, kinda necessary from the company's point of view. I never did use the ticket.
And you actually reimbursed them?
This is a business expense.
If their corporate policy is to purchase nonrefundable tickets to save costs, then they are booking these understanding that if anything changes whether in our out of their control, they would be liable for either the entire ticket or for cancellation penalties. In the long run, unless the nature of the business is that you almost always cancel/change, they're better off than buying refundable tickets.
Their policy is for them to take the risk, so they should.
Unless I'm mis-understanding and you WANTED to take the ticket which was in your name and use it for personal, non-business travel.
If that's the case, you could/should reimburse them.
And if you ended up NOT flying under that scenario, that is your rish