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

Believe me that business travel is not a perk. At least not for me. It is early starts and late nights home and constantly being on.

Can you give a specific example of what you were talking about? Your initial post is very vague and lumps business travel and staff privileges into the same sentence. Business travel is not a privilege usually, it’s a necessity. Once upon a time it might have been seen as some kind of luxury experience, but nowadays most companies have cut budgets to the bone so people are travelling overnight in economy and expected to do a full day’s work the next day or travelling with a low-cost airline and staying in a Premier Inn type of hotel. That’s been my experience recently. There is nothing glamorous or exciting about it.

We don't actually have teaspoons even in my office

Yup! No parties, biscuits, even travel expenses are complex and difficult to claim.

We do have a regional conference but that’s essential to the job and nothing fancy

We have a Christmas meal that we organise and pay for!

What crisis are you talking about? Public sector has stretched budgets but that’s been true for sixteen years. Most private sector businesses have no crisis and many of them are booming, as the GDP figures demonstrate.

Business trips are for carrying out business. If you’re one of the employees who has a role which involves business trips, your morale is pretty important - I travel with work and a decent hotel and some perks make the experience of being away more bearable.

People don't go on business trips for morale. The trips serve a business purpose. The morale point is about not making those trips so unpleasant that you end up damaging performance and retention.

I work in the public sector. I've never experienced a single jolly- everything social is paid for by the staff themselves. I'm still feeling pretty chuffed that we get tea bags in my current dept as in the last one you had to bring your own 😂

When I was in private practice, the thinking was paying for a few free drinks etc was a very good value way to maintain staff morale. The costs of having to recruit new staff or deal with under-performance far outweigh a few bottles of wine.

That's a very widely-drawn statement. Face to face interaction with one's colleagues, peers and experts from around the UK or the world can be helpful to productivity, morale, learning and development, relationship-building.

Each organisation will make its pwn cost-benefit analysis and consider its overall organisational priorities. So public sector will likely have less to spend on such activities and has always had to cut its cloth accordingly, while a thriving, growing sector (private) may have much more money to splash around on staff training and perks. Some organisations are local, while others are genuinely global etc.

There are still plenty of businesses making money and plenty of people spending money. And perhaps it’s not actually as bad a “they” say.

What public sector trips, perks and parties have you seen?

Because I work for the public sector and I don't even get milk or tea bags supplied.

The public sector generally doesn’t offer jollies unless you’re a politician of course.

There are different budgets set aside. It’s why operating a business is complex and so many people are employed in roles which aren’t simply frontline getting work done. Poor morale is costly, in all kinds of ways. Good employers know that employee morale and wellbeing is important in obtaining and retaining a workforce, hence staff celebrations and rewards, and that anybody who has to travel or attend conferences for business is soon going to start looking elsewhere if the experience is unpleasant for them.