Companies remain split over whether to implement formal corporate meeting management policies to save money and control risks, according to an exclusive Meetings Monitor survey. While some buyers said their corporate culture does not support strict policies and mandates, others said a clear policy is key to streamlining the meetings management process.
According to the survey of 186 corporate meeting buyers, 60 percent said their companies do not have a formal policy regarding meeting and conference operations.
The results mirrored a similar Meetings Monitor survey taken in 2004, when 59 percent of respondents said their companies did not have formal policies. However, 23 percent of respondents in the 2004 survey said their companies planned to adopt a formal policy, suggesting the proliferation of policies has stalled or that implementing a formal policy takes longer than one year.
Dick Zeller, vice president of consolidation solutions for Maritz Travel Co., said many companies who planned on implementing meeting policies may have found the process is more difficult and longer than they anticipated.
"It certainly makes sense as a best practice to have a standardized meeting policy that embraces all of the key components of operating a meeting—but if you're going to do it, there are a lot of moving pieces," Maritz's Zeller said.
A meetings policy is often a major change-management initiative within a company, Zeller said. It is essential to have senior management support and to find the right balance of specific procedures and general guidelines. The best policies cover 90 percent to 95 percent of the program and leave some room for exceptions, he said.
"If you try and create a policy that covers every possible contingency, it would either be so general that it would have no meaning whatsoever, or it would be so complex that nobody would try to follow it anyway," he said.
Corporate meeting policies often limit authority to source and schedule major events. According to the survey, 76 percent of respondents said their company's policy governs contracting signing authority and requires executive approval of meetings. Fifty-nine percent said the policy creates a central point for meetings management and the same percentage said it creates restrictions on corporate travel. Respondents were allowed to select multiple answers.
Research and engineering firm Science Applications International Corp. last year rolled out a new meetings policy with a standard contract addendum and limited contract-signing authority to better protect the company against attrition and cancellation fees
(Meetings Today, Sept. 19, 2005).The SAIC policy now is mandated, said Lee Ann Adams Mikeman, director of conference and dining services for the San Diego, Calif.-based company. The force of the mandate helps to cut down on risk for large expenditures. Mikeman's department worked with internal legal, procurement and travel departments to draft the policy and addendum. The company has yet to set ramifications for booking outside of policy until employees are familiar with the approval process and compliance rises.
Though adoption rates have risen steadily, Mikeman said the process has been slow.
"We're still ongoing with adoption and compliance and ongoing education. New employees come into the company and need to be trained on the system," she said.
The groups and meetings committee of the National Business Travel Association early last year released a resource paper on creating a corporate meetings policy
(Meetings Today, March 21, 2005). The paper specified eight elements of a successful policy: meeting definition, approval process for expenditures, calendaring, contracting, logistical planning, payment process, management process tools and applicable corporate policies.
The committee also stressed four key areas of consideration in implementing a policy: the development needs to be fluid, ramifications need to be set for booking out of policy, communication of the changes needs to be clear and the policy must be shared with preferred vendors.
Terri Carlton, manager of meeting services and corporate travel for BlueCross BlueShield Association and a member of the NBTA groups and meetings committee, said implementing a formal policy or guidelines for meetings management can be a big challenge.
"If it isn't supported by the top down, then it's going to be very difficult," she said. "Everybody's different. You look at your audience and see how far you can go. Policies, especially in the meetings area, are ever-evolving."
Policies reflect the industry at large, Carlton said. Compliance with legal concerns, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, and global events, such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, can necessitate drastic changes. As a meetings management program is built within a company, the policy also may grow to encompass more activities, she said.
"You can start small and work your way up and keep adding to things," she said.
Of the eight key elements of a policy, as identified by NBTA, companies may find the greatest challenge in streamlining approval of meetings expenditures.
"To me, the approval process is always the hardest because it's layered," she said. "Of course, contracting is always a challenge—especially with everything we're seeing and reading about 2006. We're finding with hotels that it's a seller's market."
Policies also must fit with the corporation's culture, Carlton said, and many companies may avoid touting a "formal policy" if they wish to avoid mandates. "Is it a policy or is it a guideline? Some companies think that the term 'policy' is too strong," she said.
"There are some companies that never mandate anything," Maritz's Zeller said, "but if it is positioned appropriately that it is a best practice and these are guidelines we are publishing, then in the right environment that can work."
Jeff Messer, director of travel and event management for Atlanta-based media conglomerate Cox Enterprises Inc., said formal written policies go against his company's management approach.
"We're very much a non-mandated environment, so there is no formal policy," according to Messer. "Our department is a service center, not a profit center."
Messer said an internal marketing drive is planned this year to show the benefits of using the meetings department.
"We just try to educate the employees," he said. "A formal policy would just not fly in this company. It's very much against the culture of the company."
Among respondents who said their companies have operations outside North America, 37 percent said they have the same meetings policy overseas as they do domestically, 16 percent said the policies were different. Nearly half, 47 percent, said their companies had not adopted a formal meetings policy abroad.