Several corporations during the past several months have created, amended or refined travel and meeting policies, effectively shifting more control over budgets, contract negotiation, site selection and the priority of proposed events away from internal managers and administrative assistants to meeting managers and, often, senior executives.
Given that many senior executives, and even travel managers, long have resisted attempts to control meetings with as firm a hand as transient travel, the policy changes represent a key industry shift: In these recessionary times, there is a greater need among executives and meetings managers to determine what the company spends on conferences and events and then to reduce that number.
The impetus for the moves, which have been handled in a variety of ways by individual corporations but all with the same general rationale, seems to be more of a result of the economy than the aftermath of Sept. 11. Many alterations in meeting procedures were a temporary response to the attacks and not intended to supplant permanent policy, sources said, but those policies are changing for other reasons.
"We've enacted a stronger approval process," said Andrea McGrath, manager of conference services at Northfield, Ill.-based Kraft Foods. "Meetings have to be approved at the vice president's level. Before, there was not as much pre-trip approval for both meetings and travel, but there is now."
McGrath said the move, implemented in the past few months, was not a direct result of Sept. 11. "It's economic factors," she said. "The restraints we implemented immediately after 9/11 were lifted three weeks later. This is about formalizing the process to ensure return."
Weyerhaeuser Corp. of Federal Way, Wash., also recently changed its meeting policy, lowering the minimum number of attendees needed to require a written meeting contract from 25 to 15, which is more in line with industry standards. All such contracts must be negotiated and approved by Weyerhaeuser's meeting management department.
Policy at Akamai Technologies Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., has just changed to mandate early air booking for meeting attendees and the lack of reimbursement for wasteful meeting expenditures, said manager of travel and meeting services Terry Sullo. Also, attendance at all corporate meetings has become invitation-only. Now, an Akamai senior executive can view a list of attendees and their booked airfares to determine who is not in compliance.
"We're still doing a lot of meetings, and we're getting information out to people sooner," Sullo said. "We can tell from a printout who booked their fares within the window and who didn't, and there are very few people who are outside this policy. We've tried to do this in the past, but we've never had the management push."
Sullo said Akamai also wouldn't reimburse expenses that the attendee could have avoided by using services provided by the company.
"Peripheral spending increases the overall cost of the meeting," Sullo said. "So if you rent a car or take a taxi instead of using the bus we provided for you, or order room service when we provide dinner, you won't be reimbursed. We want to achieve positive financial goals and cut back on wasted spending, which is all that is."
KPMG of Montvale, N.J., which already had a deeply centralized meetings department, also has mandated approval by high-ranking executives, though there's a twist: The proposed change emanated from a request made from the meetings department to the firms' most senior management, said director of meeting services Carol Muldoon.
"We've initiated a process in which every request to hold a meeting must be approved at the partner level before we proceed with a site search," Muldoon said. "We wanted those who are truly owners of the budgets to know what is being spent on practices, and it's also a way to make sure the leadership understands our role and that their level of awareness of what we're doing is raised."
Though Muldoon's department did not make the request to KPMG senior management strictly out of economic concern, there likely will be financial benefits to the new policy.
"This is about better business practice and management," Muldoon said. "Though the end result might be to make managers or admins step back to justify the cost before going ahead with the meeting, our role is to help with the logistical planning and manage corporate spending."