To think that employers should pay all out of pocket expenses for business trips?

[cantaffordtogotowork]

AIBU to think that if you incur additional expenses for traveling overnight / significantly outside of normal business hours, your employer should pay these costs?

Specifically,

• Overnight child care - if you're working normal hours you'd just pay for after school care, but for business trips overnight care is hard to find and expensive if you're a single parent with limited support
• Pet care - if you're working normal hours you'd feed your own pets, walk your own dog etc. I have a very obliging friend who often does this for me (reciprocal arrangement), but if they're unavailable when I'm on a business trip it costs me £40 per night (approx 40% of my take home daily pay) purely because I'm on a business trip (London prices, unavoidably so)

Obviously meals, train fares etc are covered. I can even get a glass of wine FFS. I can't help but feel that the expenses system is designed with the assumption that it's a man traveling while his wife dutifully stays at home.

AIBU to think that you should be able to expense such costs that are incurred purely because you're going the extra mile for your employer?

They even wanted me to use my personal laptop instead of giving me one. I refused.

Mine pay me more to use my own!!

WitchesHatRim I can see that if a person starts a job with the expectation of travel but the problems come when an expectation of availability to travel has evolved.

Not paying for additional costs incurred which are not directly related to the travel itself is one of the ways that employers pretend to themselves that travel is not inconvenient & expensive to employees.

It goes along with not paying for additional time, leisure activities, phone calls. After all, who wouldnt want to spend many nights away from home stuck in a hotel room watching BBC News 24?

It goes along with not paying for additional time, leisure activities, phone calls. After all, who wouldnt want to spend many nights away from home stuck in a hotel room watching BBC News 24?

Personally I have more minutes on my phone than I can possibly use, like having a wander or run round somewhere different, using a gym for once & I positively taunt my OH by being in bed & asleep before 9!!

It's also nice to be an individual for once & get away from the family unit...

Piffle you seem to be implying that working away does incur extra costs for your family, but since you’re able to offload those costs on your DH, you don’t care?

Piffle doing those things is fine if you are somewhere you can go to for a gym/walk/run. Many of my business trips are to industrial estates/commercial districts where leaving the hotel area isnt really feasible at night.

Jobs do evolve over time.

DH's team have to travel more and more . His employer pays for childcare, indeed they encourage people to claim - basically to make sure they have no excuses to refuse travelling.

My employer doesn't pay for childcare. We have had people refusing to travel for training courses purely for financial reasons. So they will be at a disadvantage for promotions.

It's not right and I find the "your kids, your problem" attitude here shocking and something I thought people of my generation (70s born) wouldn't have to hear. It's nothing to do with personal responsibility and all with the expectation that there is a SAHP - also the insidious new idea that you have to be so grateful you have a job that you can be asked to pay to be employed.

Well having children and pets really is a lifestyle choice. If you take on a job that involves travel that is also your choice. Paying for care overnight when your job involves travel is no different to paying for care during the day for a 9-5 job. As for a glass of wine? Are there any other treats you are expecting your employer to pay for? Maybe a spa treatment when you arrive at your hotel? You sound very entitled and very unreasonable.

This is madness.

RestingGrinchFace many people take on roles which at the outset are 9-5 and set up their child care etc around that. Then the job evolves, the trip to Head Office is no longer to the next town but overseas. The 9-5 arrangements dont cover this. The employer ignores the change or says it's only temporary 'until things settle down'.

The only choice for the employee is to suck it up and start looking for another job. Employer is then stuck with the cost of recruiting and training plus paying more (employers seldom pay market rates for roles except at recruitment time). All the experience and goodwill with the original employee walks out of the door.

It is lose/lose for employee and employer but many employers dont see this until it is too late.

Many times in my career I have been involved in projects which start off with 'jollys' for the big bosses but when the real work starts the budget per head gets slashed. Flights and hotels get downgraded. Expenses get scrutinised with a magnifying glass and any evening meal beyond burger and a diet coke is not claimable.

If I am away from home for a week why shouldnt the company pay for me to have a glass of wine, watch a film? After all I am there for their benefit and not mine.

By all means watch a film and have a glass of wine but those are your expenses, not your company's.

UnitedKungdom but why should I have to pay? If I was at home the wine would be at supermarket price, the film would have been on Sky. I am out of pocket because I am stuck in a hotel.

I tend to find there are supermarkets near most hotels

And you can take a tablet with films preloaded.

Youre being precious. Go to the supermarket then, and watch a film provided on the TV rather than ppv.

Or you could tell them in your interview that on business trips you require access to sky movies or equilivant, a bottle of wine from room service and a plate of only yellow m&m's because that's what you'd have at home. See how they take that.

The company needs to provide essentials. If you want additional entertainment, boozing beyond that it's your shout.

I don't believe that companies should pay for childcare or pet sitting but I do believe that you shoukdn't be out of pocket for regular expenses.

In our company you only get an evening meal paid if your flight gets back after 9pm, so I have no option but to pay for an overpriced food option at the airport or - slightly cheaper - unhealthy fast food. Or we are expected to take cheapest flight even if that means us getting up at 4 am rather than 5 am and the difference isn't that much as its system based, oh and park at the long stay - no way am I adding on to a 16 hr day so I just take a taxi instead which is twice as expensive but doesn't get flagged up on the expenses system.

Travel with work is tiring and involves huge amounts of personal time - I begrudge having to put my own money towards it as well.

Supermarkets near hotels? Does rather depend where you are doesn't it? Travel in the UK, fine, I'm not bothered. I can generally entertain myself. Stuck in a hotel in the outskirts of Moscow in November the options were a bit limited. Loading films on the company laptop wasnt an option. This was pre tablet days so I simply didn't have the baggage space to take the home computer as well. Thankfully the major travelling is now behind me but I have plenty of memories of business trips spent on industrial estates in the back end of beyond.

Asking for things in interview is only possible if there is an interview. As has been said (many times on this thread) the travel requirements of a role evolve and often employees aren't offered a lot of choice without damaging their careers.

Surely if you have a child or a dog it’s your responsibility to ensure that someone is around to cover that life choice.

But Gertie I don't think anyone is saying that normal life costs should be paid but jobs change, companies change. That once a month trip to the head office in the next town becomes an overseas trip because the company has been taken over and Head Office is now in another country.

Across the last decade employers have been able to bully employees into sucking up the extra costs for fear of their jobs. It's shortsighted because employees who can't keep affording to suck up the extra costs eventually leave. The employer has to recruit which is expensive in itself and the new recruit will negotiate on the basis that it is a travelling role so will be a lot more demanding of t&cs. Meanwhile the employer has lost all the experience the first employee had gained over perhaps a number of years.

Good point about being abroad, I do only travel in UK

It's not right and I find the "your kids, your problem" attitude here shocking and something I thought people of my generation (70s born) wouldn't have to hear. It's nothing to do with personal responsibility

Born in 70s, travel a lot for work, 5 and 2 year oId.

Children are a PERSONAL responsibility. Expenses should be equal across all employees. Otherwise given the choice of sending single mother employee A who will cost an extra £100 or employee B a single male no kids, if the company choose employee B them A could raise a discrimination claim that she wasn’t chosen because of childcare costs.

I’m surprised some companies do pay childcare. Children are generally a lifestyle choice, not an employers responsibility.

Caveat - if travel isn’t a regular part of your job then things are maybe different and I can understand accommodations being made but still don’t think they are obligatory.

It's not right and I find the "your kids, your problem" attitude here shocking and something I thought people of my generation (70s born) wouldn't have to hear

Born in the 70s. Why should my DC be any ones problem but mine?

Expecting companies to pay for films etc is ridiculous

Why ridiculous Piglet? What is the employee supposed to do all evening stuck in a hotel in a foreign industrial/commercial estate? Go for a walk round the offices factories and warehouses? Watch incomprehensible game shows and BBC News 24? Having been stuck in this situation on many occasions I know that it is dull and quite wearing after quite a short while.

Actually Moscow wasn't as bad as some trips. The hotel bill was in Cyrillic script so the expenses team had little choice but to pay it whatever was on it!

I used to work in a role with a lot of UK travel. My employer would have paid for additional childcare (not the usual day to day stuff) because they wanted to ensure that women weren't excluded from the opportunities that travel sometimes brings with it, but I'm pretty sure would have laughed at the notion of paying for pet care. There have to be some limits.

"The hotel bill was in Cyrillic script so the expenses team had little choice but to pay it whatever was on it!"

If they were that bothered they could have done google translate.

Tbh I tend to work or sleep :o