Red lights displaying the red light district

Sex and Business Trips

A tale of insubordination, a love tryst, travelling without permission, violating security and info-security policies, cumulating in losing a job and disappearing for 3 months.  It sounds like the basis for a jaw-dropping Netflix series, right?  But no, this was the story of one traveller on one business trip, earlier this year.

We’re all familiar with the glamorisation of business, shows & movies like The Wolf of Wolf Street, Empire, Mad Men, Succession, Silicon Valley and Billions dramatise deal making, rule-breaking, office affairs and a whole lot more, but when does fiction come a reality, how close to the mark is some of this stuff and how does an organisation promote control and safety, especially if one of the perks of their industry is the socialising and the after party.

Those more notorious industries aside, we must remember that people are people. Whatever job they do, they bring with them their own unique combination of belief systems, risk tolerances, moral code, interests, and obsessions.  Nearly everybody is looking for connection, escape, to de-stress and the business trip is an ideal legitimate conduit, to be away from home, step out of the norm and perhaps exercise some well-deserved downtime.  How people exercise this is as varied as you can possibly imagine.

Over the years, I have been privy to some interesting hotel bills, with questionable descriptions, (which we accrued to room service).  Executives flying out mistresses to join them on an extended trip, private limousines to notorious locale. As a booking agent, it was not our job to question, merely to make the booking and collate the invoice, which we did with discretion.  Senior managers expenses are rarely questioned, neither is behaviour until it becomes a real problem.

What always interested me though, is that this extra-curricular activity is not confined to the C-Suite, there are signs of it across the entire organisation.  We look to the top to guidance, if it is embedded within the company culture from the top, it stands to reason that it will filter down through the team.  But this is not always the case, even those organisations with strict interpersonal policies and codes of conduct have to from time to time, contain or deal with a traveller who, put simply, takes things too far.

I once had a client who was struggling to reconcile their car rental bills with the booking data provided by us.  They were on average about 6 months behind on their credit card statements, meaning it was nearly impossible for the traveller to “remember” or easily play ignorant when questioned.  And it wasn’t one-off events, it was endemic throughout certain departments or teams within the organisation.  When we eventually got to the bottom of it, it transpired that many of the frequent travellers would upgrade their car locally, from the cat. A or B on the policy to a luxury or convertible.  Much sexier to pick up the girlfriend in a corvette than a Kia.

 How do you police something like this, when any policy or guidance can easily be bent to serve a purpose.  Up until now, companies have relied on people exercising good morale judgement, but what exactly is that and how do you manage something that has a different meaning to every individual.

And how do we keep our vulnerable team members safe, we have diverse work-forces who look up to management for guidance, are we sure that the positions we might put ourselves into are OK for other, less experienced travellers too?

 More too often, reaction happens after the event.  If an individual takes advantage of their position or exercises poor moral decision making, which causes problems for others or paints the organisation in a bad light, the person is identified and dealt with.  Usually undramatically and usually by mutual consent.  But is there a way that we can build into our Travel Frameworks some guidance about what are legitimate business trips and what are not.

This is important, because I believe the lines have been blurred.  A combination of company cultures entrenched in business policies of the 80s & 90s (I am being generous in some cases) being used by a diverse workforce that are exposed to (and willing to take) risks never imagined previously.  And in some cases those risks are as much about the traveller themselves and their conduct, as the location they are visiting.

 We are not going to be able to foresee every situation, but we can protect ourselves, our employees and our organisations by setting out what reasons for travel are acceptable and which are not and of course, what types of behaviour are acceptable and what are not.  Hoping that people do the “right thing” or will act accordingly should be a thing of the past, education, frameworks and pro-active leadership, questioning our own conduct as much as those of others is how we’ll reduce risk and keep others safe.

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