Husband’s female colleague’s issue being taken very seriously.

If this is a genuine question…
In places I’ve worked before the unwritten rule would be a week. It’s expected that a couple of times a year most people can be apart from their partners (however much in love they are) for a couple of days in a premier inn in Bristol, or a Mon-Fri away every couple of years for a training course. If it were over a week in Europe or the US then colleagues could approach managers and check in if ok to bring partners / tack on a holiday and this would usually be fine.

I know it’s hard to imagine, but some of us like our partners.

what happened and caused it all ?

Yes, this raised a flag for me, too. It sounds like a bit of a game of telephone and not particularly plausible. It's an odd complaint at the onset, made over the weekend, and HR changes a longstanding company policy that quickly, over one complaint? And OP's husband has been given access to the email voicing the complaint? I don't think OP has been given a fully accurate picture.

I do too if I’m honest I find it very antiquated, particularly as it’s mainly women tagging along, you seldom see men wanting to go, and are often concerned it’s a controlling thing if they did.

i can’t imagine wanting to go on my husbands business trups with him and I’d be a bit horrified if he said he was coming with me. It would feel like he was coming to the office with me.

as much as I clearly prefer his company to my colleagues. That doesn’t mean I will shun my colleagues so I can always be with him. And I’d not want him to do the same for me, socialising with colleagues is an important part of many roles. It’s where relationships are formed, where issues can be informally discussed,etc.

I just can’t imagine ever wanting to be involved to that level.

For me it varies from business trip to business trip. I work in oil and gas so I will not exactly be taking my wife along to see some clients at an offshore platform fabrication yard in the arse end of nowhere. Other trips are wall to wall all day meetings that dont finish till late doors so not suitable either. If it is just me and I heading off to some more agreeable European city my wife and I would check logistics and see if she can join me at the tale end of my trip where we can bolt on cheeky weekend away. Sometimes there is a one day overlap between my work and her coming out but she can head out and see the sights and hook up with me later.

I find it all rather odd that there is an openness for spouses to attend.

I travel frequently for client visits etc and it has never occurred to me to ask DP to tag along (even when travelling alone).

I also have a black tie gala I am attending tomorrow night, where spouses were invited, but I prefer to keep my private life out of my work life.

My DP wouldnt have time to anyway - he has his own job.

DP may also need to go to Texas for the week later in the year for work, and even if I was invited, I wouldnt want to go.

I find it all rather weird.

The older I get, the less.I want to spend free time with my colleagues!

Yes but there should be space in our lives to do both,

This is such a spiteful comment. It's not about being 'welded at the hip' and not being able to 'cope'- some people do just actually like and enjoy spending time with their partners and massively prefer it to spending their free time with colleagues.

Agreed on both counts. I work in tech sales as a field rep so travel often and it would never occur to me to bring my husband along. The only time that's really done is for President's Club trips, which are a vacation to reward us for high performance and spouses/partners/guests are invited by the company. Still an odd conclusion to draw, though.

But in this case it's the single person complaining that the married colleagues won't hang out with her.

Fwiw I think there's probably more to the story than OP knows. Like PPs said, the company might just be throwing the new colleague under the bus.

But in any case, surely the point is that people shouldn't be obligated to hang out with colleagues during their free time. They can meet a friend, video call a family member, watch Netflix back at the hotel room, whatever they want.

If people are too welded at the hip to their partners to be able to cope with not seeing them for the night, that's not the fault of people who are single, or whose partner's actually have their own job.

If people don't have partners that's not the problem/fault of the people with partners.

I don’t believe there was a complaint, IMO. If there was it was extremely reckless of the company to disclose the fact it was her who made the ‘complaint’ and nobody knows what the content of that was.

It sounds to me like it’s all been blown out of proportion. A new starter assumes the team go for dinner together, on a catch up to her manager she’s made a comment about it, this has then been blown up to the point the company are now blaming her for the withdrawal of partners staying with them on work trips. That’s what it sounds like to me. OP’s husband could be spinning any sort of story as to why, the only people who will every truly know are the woman and the management team and if word for word what the OP has said is true - I’d be raising a grievance about the conduct of the management and what they’ve disclosed to people who shouldn’t be privy as to why the decision has been made. Like the company doesn’t have the balls to say itself it made the decision so it’s a singular woman’s fault.

Meeting was today I hope Op will update.

The men weren’t socialising together @thelakes0310 one was going to a restaurant, one to the pub.

I can understand woman speaking to her boss after trip saying she assumed plan was for colleagues to eat together and could they clarify the spouse policy etc but to go for a full complaint immediately with implication of untoward behaviour seems shortsighted if she wanted to socialise with colleagues going forward. Realistically neither will be inclined to have anything to do with her outside work hours in case she makes a complaint.

And if they did that’s on them to pay any surcharges from changing from single occupancy to double. It’s not some huge gotcha that they wouldn’t tell us. We don’t have any rule against it.

The issue again is that the two men who work together were socialising together after work, with each other. The company put her in a position whereby she didn’t know about the rule with partners coming along, she assumed the dinner would be her and her two colleagues who she has a working relationship with to find out it’s not, it’s them and their partners who she doesn’t know. Therefore making her feel uncomfortable with the situation and turned it down.
Nobody knows what happened after, only that the company have behaved appallingly openly blaming her for a rule change and making her a leper to not only staff, but their partners as well.

I work in HR and book travel for our employees within the U.K. and I’ve never had an employee ask for their partner to stay overnight.

That’s because most people wouldn’t bother asking HR, they’d just do it.

I work in HR and book travel for our employees within the U.K.

I don't think this thread was meant for you then ..

Well it's not like it was disguised, is it ?

No one has managed to point out where it was wrong (yet). They are more than welcome as I didn't claim it was definitive. Just interesting that it seemed to find some points in the OP worthy of note.

I'm quite underwhelmed with "AI" (it isn't). However, it has it's uses.

Reminds me of that program Bewitched when Samantha always seemed to be hosting dinner parties for her husband's company.

We do have a team environment and our employees who do have time away from home generally do for anything from one night up to weeks. They work together in the office and they do generally socialise together - however there isn’t an expectation to on our side. I’ve done both sides, eating in my hotel room and nights where I’ve had dinner with colleagues. It’s a personal preference.

The way I’ve interpreted the post is that she hasn’t realised their wives are there and potentially thought she’d be third wheeling by accepting their invitation, which I would feel the same and can’t disagree. The issue comes when the men are socialising after hours with colleagues (each other) but putting her in a position whereby she doesn’t feel comfortable attending with them because their wives are also there.

Yes, sounds like she may have felt like an outsider on her own work trip and being new would have made it worse.
I also wonder if one of the males have also made a joke about the wives keeping an eye on them in her hearing.

I think that posts which are an obvious derail do get deleted. Repetitive comments (cancel the cheque) may just be a facet of humanity.