Managing a Life of Frequent Travel: Best Practices - Seminar, April 27, 2000

John Ivancevich, DBA, Cullen Research Professor of Organizational Behavior and Management, University of Houston

DR. STRIKER: We will start off with Dr. Ivancevich, who will give us an overall framework and some suggestions about approaching this issue at different levels in the organization.

DR. IVANCEVICH: I am glad that Jim put an asterisk with regard to best practices, because I am in total agreement with him. We do not have anything that even resembles a close to perfect kind of analysis on what we should be doing with regard to the travel stress area in the organizational side of the discussion.

I am talking primarily from a corporate management side. What I would like to do is talk specifically about a strategic approach to intervention. We have got all different kinds of ways that we can talk about intervention here and we will on the panel here and probably in the audience with questions talk about different types of intervention. We can, of course, talk about it at the individual level of intervention and we can state that the responsibility and the accountability for correcting or getting straight with regard to problems in the travel stress area rests with the individual and, therefore, the individual has a responsibility to work their way through the difficulties of travel stress, whatever they may be for that individual.

Then, of course, we can talk about the organizational level of intervention. And there are a host of things that we can typically talk about but we don't have examples that are empirically supported that are even close to—if you were in here for the SmithKline Beecham presentation, that was a very progressive—that is in my opinion a progressive approach to preventive health approach, that has a strategic orientation to it.

But most of the organizations in the world do not have even anything resembling—and not that they shouldn't—but anything resembling that particular level of sophistication with regard to organizational intervention.

I want to be blunt with you and I am not only talking about American organizations, but I am talking about any organization in developing or developed countries having that level of sophistication.

And, in fact, most organizations using a definitional split, most organizations are much smaller than 47,000 employees with the merger of 100,000 plus employees. Most organizations, in fact, fit a definition of a medium-sized or a small-sized organization. Yet, they have got travel problems and travel stress problems.

What I would like to do is to take a quick look at the major diseases and causes of death. When we look at the turn of the 20th century, when we turned into the 20th century and when we turned into the 21st century here, we see a number of those factors on top of the 21st century list that have stress implicated with.

I am not talking about travel stress only, but I am talking about stress contributing some degree of variance with regard to those particular problems, the heart disease area, even cancers, immune systems, suppression, the whole range of kinds of diseases have kind of shifted. I think we have more accurate records today and more accurate assessments of causes of death, as a matter of fact, between 1900 and 2000.

Health care spending and employer issues: We have asked the question. Today someone asked the question here what are some of the reasons why we should be concerned about this, the travel stress area? When we take a look at health care spending in organizations, it ranges all over. I have given you kind of a middle-range of the normal Bell distribution curve per employee and I haven't split this on a managerial or a non-managerial split, but somewhere in the $2,500 to $5,000 range with regard to health care spending annually and some of the other kind of factors that are attributed to being concerned about travel stress.

Does travel stress lower productivity? I put a question mark on there. Does travel stress lead to lost time at work, more absenteeism, more tardiness? I put a question mark on there. Does it lead to higher insurance premiums because of the fact that, in fact, we have more claims, we have more medical expenses and then, of course, turnover, recruitment, training, all of these things are cost factors that we would have to look at.

Before I get into this slide, let me talk about some of the questions we have got to be asking and trying to answer. One question I have already posed to you, who should intervene? Should that intervention be an individual intervention, an organizational intervention or should it be some combination thereof? Should it be an intervention by a third party outside the organization if there is an intervention?

So, we look at that particular issue. What is the risk of intervention? Are there any risks of losing the employee when we intervene and we bumble the intervention? I am looking at it negatively. Now there will be a positive twist. If we didn't intervene, we may lose employees. But we look at that.

What are the risks legally of intervening into someone's exercise program, someone's diet program, someone's recovery resilience program? What are some of the legal issues that we should be looking at? When should we intervene? Should we intervene at the pre-trip, pre-travel point? Should we intervene at the travel point? Should we intervene at the post-travel point or should we be intervening at multiple points if we are talking about intervention at the individual and the organizational or the third party level?

What type of resources do we have available for expending on these interventions? And this is a question, a bottom-line question that managers would ask. And then last, but not least, just on the list, and this is a partial list: What are the expected results of the interventions? And are we going to assess the interventions' effectiveness and then are we going to basically modify the interventions in the future based on what our assessments are?

So, talking about assessment in an organization is tricky, just as tricky as talking about dealing with the travel stress area. The model that I would ask us to think about—I don't have a model—but the concept that I would ask us to think about would be the concept of organizational change. There is a lot of literature, a lot of research on organizational change and the interventions that are associated with organizational change, excluding now for the sake of discussion the issue of travel stress and just talk about organizational change in general.

One way we talk about organizational change in the management area is we look at the concept of changing the behaviors of people, changing the structures of the organization or changing the technology of the organization or changing them in an interactive kind of way where all three of those are being affected. And some people believe that if you change behavior, there is going to have to be changes in the structure and also the technology or vice versa.

So, taking a look at the change factor and changing behavior, we know a lot of things in the organizational change literature. We know that people resist. And I don't want to give you something that is obvious, that when you change the pattern and the routine or you try to intervene or try to get people to intervene through educational or support program or other kind of intervention, there is going to be a tendency to resist or, for that particular pattern to be followed, there is going to be a tendency to drop off and not follow the regiment that is being recommended.

So, we have got to look at the individual behavioral change in pre-travel, during travel, post-travel, very, very, very difficult. We also know that people respond better to change when they are involved in developing the change program that is going to affect them. So, here is a vote right here at this particular point where the individual has to be involved or should be involved in the intervention program to some extent.

The organization may be leading the charge but the point is that we know that when individuals are involved, they have a tendency to stick with the program longer to try and experiment more and to basically be disciplined more to follow what the education and what the support of the program is.

In addition, we know that interventions take time to take. It is basically not like a shot that has a complete immediate effect on an individual. The intervention, whatever point we decide to intervene at, may take some significant time for that particular intervention to take in the individual.

We also know that interventions are much more effective in the organizational side of the equation, especially when they are supported by the top management if, in fact, the top management team of the organization is respected by the employees in the organization. So, some type of top management support in championing—and I am not only talking about one individual, but I am talking about a team up there—that is respected can, in fact, have a significant effect on whether the particular intervention is going to take or not.

So, it is difficult ? education, support, management involvement, individual involvement should be probably on the agenda as far as interventions are concerned.

We have gone through the travel stress factors primarily with regard to having an effect on all of these variables and I talked about these factors this morning with regard to intervention. You have got individual points of intervention here and also organizational points of intervention.

Let me just cite some examples of some of the interventions that I have seen, I have discussed [?] I have not studied them empirically, but I have talked with organizations, large, small, medium organizations, with regard to interventions with regard to travel stress.

This is what the organizations state, and I don't have this in any one organization; I am going across the board and that is maybe why Jim put me up here first because I have got kind of a general kind of outlook on what is out there.

Some organizations are using work scheduling programs; that is, they are involved in work scheduling before the individual leaves the organization. They are making sure and helping that individual work to get their desks up to speed so that their desks aren't loaded when they leave the organization for the trip.

Also with regard to return, when they come back in the post-travel, they are also scheduling work at different levels and also instructing people working with these individuals so that expectations are built to the point that the individual is going to be given some time to readjust and reconnect with the organization after being out of the organization for a period of time.

There are also organizations that are intervening with regard to families and working with the spouse and working with the children, especially the longer the period of the travel, the cycle, the longer that is going to be, the more intense this kind of organizational intervention is in some of the organizations that are using family planning.

Making travel arrangements prior to and handling all of those details and in handling all of the logistics when the individual is traveling in another location being handled by the organization is another area where organizations are involved.

Training seminars: Training seminars for health, I mean for diet, training seminars also for the whole culture, now with many of these organizations moving toward not only stand-up training but also on-line training. We had an example, the expatriate example that you used. I have seen in organizations where they have not only expat kind of sites on line, on the web, but also just basically just sites for travel. And they have a travel site, travel cafe type sites with menus that you can go through and click on, you know, cuisine, locations, all kind of information that they feel is important, safety information, crime prevention information.

Some organizations, of course, being involved in anti-terrorist training, food handling, types of training, consular [?] programs. So, there is a whole host of those.

Then, the individual side that organizations encourage basically kind of spin off these things—the web enabled kind of training programs, bio-feedback kind of labs being set up for individuals, especially returning, nutritional supplement programs. I have seen those, programs even dealing with medication, effective packing, those types of things.

So, you have here then some organizations that are, in fact, pretty immersed and imbedded with individual and organizational types of interventions, hoping to make the transition to the travel location, during the travel location make that smoother, and then the return trip.

Let me focus in my minute here or few minutes here—let me focus on the return factor when the individuals return back to an organization. Someone talked earlier—and I don't remember who it was this morning—was talking about a day off or some time off for an individual when that individual comes back into an organization. That is a hard sell in most corporate settings for a lot of different reasons.

One, they don't understand the benefits of that because it is not on the top of their radar screen with regard to the fact that an individual needs some kind of reconnecting time. But the point is that area right there where the expectations of colleagues and supervisors can, in fact, be managed better—and that may be as effective or more effective as a matter of fact than giving an individual time off because they want to get back to the job site as quick as they can get back because they have been disconnected, they have been physically disconnected—they probably have been electronically connected to that particular site.

In summary, my summarization is that I believe that intervention should take place at multiple points, pre, during and post. I suggested earlier today when someone asked the question to the morning panel that realistic previews of travel should be given to all employees hired into an organization. I believe that organizations should, in fact, attempt to keep individuals connected some way to the organization while they are traveling, that is training individuals if they are not familiar with the electronic connectivity but having some buddy system set up in the organization where you have a buddy connected. And this is an area that is definitely indeed of continual—not continual—but a start of research to basically determine which interventions are most effective with which individuals.

And, as I stated, I don't think there is going to be in the near future a silver bullet package that will apply to every organization. It is going to have to be experimentation, looking at what research is available, benchmarking yourself against progressive companies.

Thank you very much.

[APPLAUSE]

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