AIBU to question conference/ business trips/ luxuries of business spending during a serious financial crisis?

They aren't paying 2.5k a month. On 90K they contribute 7.35% and the employer contributed around 28% on the alpha scheme, but it's not as easy as saying 30% and getting a certain pot. Plus it's mostly considered as the reason the actual wage is often lower ( whilst 90K sounds high to a lot of people, it will be director level and there will be no bonus)

In many private sector companies you will see them match your 5% or the better ones will do 10.

If anyone wants to join the public sector, it is a choice that you can make 😅 Majority of people are not on 90K 🤣

Short-term only, thankfully! I'm back to travelling about once a month now. I don't know how our sales teams do that kind of schedule all the time.

TBF that’s spectacularly bad for your health and family life. Is it long term plan or can you fix the timescales?

This.

Im on a trip right now and wont be home til Tuesday. So basically working 12 days in a row.

Although sadly not business class and not even that can make the passport queues disappear

I travel on business. Thinking about this summer, I flew out to Shanghai one Saturday night (economy), arrived Sunday afternoon. Got as much sleep as possible, had a day of meetings in Shanghai, then got on a bullet train to Beijing. Two days of meetings, then a 2am flight back to London (economy again), arriving at 6am. Saw my husband and children, did my washing, and was out on a flight to Poland the next day. Rinse and repeat.

The longest I was home over the whole summer holidays was less than 48 hours. By the time the kids went back to school, I couldn't tell you what day it was, I was so tired. On one flight, I was sat for 11 hours next to a man who just happened to keep invading my space and stroking my arm "in his sleep". I had to socialise all day, from breakfast to dinner. The only time I got to myself was when I went to the loo. The back home office work didn't stop, so I had to answer emails, get on calls and coordinate my team from whatever timezone I happened to be in at the time.

Like heck would I be doing that for fun, or would my company be paying for a jolly. In China, I learned some key information that completely changed our business strategy and saved the company millions. Face to face communication is really important in Chinese culture. You don't get nuggets like that from a Teams call, or at least not until you've invested a significant amount of time in building real-life relationships first. In Poland, I used my experience and expertise to walk a new manager through an upcoming external audit, pre-empting findings that could otherwise cause weeks in paperwork or, at worst, suspension of our business in Europe. Again, that's not something you get from a call.

Yes I think this is probably true. If I had had the chance when I was young (I didn't) I think I might have enjoyed it. Now they are a major inconvenience. Shit food, budget hotels, early starts. Very little to recommend them.

In my experience, young people tend to find business trips exciting and older people tend to dislike them (except for those trying to escape family life). They rarely have much in the way of perks for older people as food and rooms in most business hotels tend to be less nice than a home once you've hit your 30s and have a bit of financial stability. Also don't have the conveniences you're used to. Can be quite lonely and get in the way of hobbies and regular social life.

Business trips are to do business - sell, buy, network, develop ideas. The novelty of staying in a bland corporate hotel, room service, and eating out wears off very quickly. They’re exhausting, highly pressurised as you need to fit in as many meetings as possible in the time available, and quite lonely. It’s fine to have a bit of fun but most of the time you’re too tired or have too much to do for the next day.You fly business class as you need to work and/or sleep on the plane because you’re expected to hit the ground running - prepared and not jet lagged. You get private healthcare because the company can’t afford to have you off sick for six months waiting on surgery for your heart problem. They’re not really ‘perks’; they’re strategies to keep you working.

Depends what kind of civil servant we are talking about. It's the same with academia. The salaries start really low but 100k for a professorship is far from unusual

With academics doing research, presenting and publishing that research is as major a part of their work as teaching. In some roles more. International recognition, being part of ref exercises beyond their own uni is part and parcel of conference season.

Yeah right

Well that's not public service pension but personal choice regarding pension contribution.... Anyone who can spare should be able to do that?

That doesn’t sound right. On the CS alpha scheme you’d be building up roughly £2k a year of pension for each year on £90k, so after 8 years that’s around £16k a year, before revaluation. They must have other pension years included somewhere, or there’s been a misunderstanding.

In any case most civil servants are not on £90k, that's unusual!

This is the problem, people hear something and run with it. Only the most senior civil servants even get close to that kind of salary.

You're totally right, it is defined contribution however you have to put a value on it at some point as you say.

£2.5k a month is about right via salary sacrifice

30% pension on a £90k salary.... Now on more than that so will only build

Considering public-sector pensions are defined-benefit schemes you don't build up a pot like that, that's not how it works, they don’t have a £250k pension pot sitting there. They may have a pension with a calculated value of £250k, but that’s very different from having £250k in an actual pot!
Someone's telling fibs or misunderstood how public sector pensions work.

If it’s actually a £250k pension pot, you’d be talking about putting roughly £2.5k a month into it for 8 years, depending growth. That’s not something you’d normally get from 8 years of a contributions to a Civil Service pension 😂.

Ps. I'm not denying public sector pensions are generous.

If you fly out on a business trip and secure a new sale worth £100k, then that 5k on flights and a hotel is well well worth it. Business trips are often essential, my dh has American clients, he needs to see them physically occasionally to keep the contract, it's built into how much they are charged by his business, and he'd rather not go, it isnt fun having jet lag and being away from home even if he does get a hotel and a few dinners. The clue is in the name really - business trip. No company is signing off jollies on the regular, of course conferences and meetings can include some socialising, drinks, dinners but they'll only be agreed if there is a clear business reason for them (new clients/business development, learning/professional development, expanding into a new market, smoozhing existing clients to keep a contract, ensuring face to face meetings happen etc). For parties, they'll be quite rare and will be based on morale and staff retention - capitalism only works if it keeps making money, businesses will all be keeping an eye on the pennies and doing a cost_benefit analysis of any spending at all. If there's not a good benefit, people won't be doing it. A lot of parties and socialising in the public sector is paid for by individuals, rather than cost/benefit, it tends to just be cost assessment in the public sector organisations I know (again, dh had a UK public sector client - not even free coffee or tea there and certainly no business class flights or jollies).

😂😂😂😂😂

No they don't 😂

I work for a large corporate and that kind of thing has been hugely slimmed down over the last few years. There are still conferences and so on but there are budget limits on how much can be spent on sending delegates, and a business justification has to be agreed at a senior level. Travel generally is also monitored.

A bloody massive pension for one!

I know someone only 8 years into their profession with £250k in their pot!!

Enjoying something and it serving a sensible business purpose are not mutually exclusive, OP.

Public sector has cut back - first thing that happened when labour came into power. We have to get approval for travel over a certain amount from various different senior civil servants and same for any conferences / away days, so we haven’t had any.

Well to be fair, they do book us into that crappy Travelodge just off the dual carriageway and buy us a burger from the Greene King pub next door when travelling on business, they don't make us sleep in the car. Perhaps that's what the OP means?

Until recently I went to a conference every year with a black tie dinner. It was in a Hilton in Birmingham by the side of a motorway and we had to get up at 6 and drive 2 hours to be back at the office for 9 the next day. I can't say it felt like a perk.