Work travel - I really don't want to go

[Thereluctanttraveller]

But I honestly can't see an alternative. Is there anything I'm missing? Or do I just have to get on with it?

I have a quite senior role which overlaps with a number of areas one of which us performance development / training.

This quarter, senior management given instructions to roll out some extensive training. This has to be delivered F2F to 5 sites in the UK, with over 350 people involved. I am based at the 1 site in the South. All the other offices are in the Midlands/ North.

The training can only be delivered in small groups, and is at least half a day per group. Doing the maths I will need to spend at least a week at each site. All are 3+ hours from home so I will be away for a week at a time.

I just can't face it. But I don't see the alternative. I am running the sessions with another person but there's just the 2 of us. No one else knows the material or is able to travel.

I am dreading being away from home for that long. A night or 2 is fine but weeks at a time...I don't know how I will juggle all my home responsibilities. I feel exhausted just thinking about it.

I was that child once. My solo parent Mum had to make ends meet, and often her contracts took her away (abroad) for weeks at a time. I was 15/16 and my older sibling was 17/18 when it all started.

Looking back, it was one of the best things ever. We learned responsibility and independence, and most of all it was a complete two way street trust wise.

We did have some family in the same city for emergencies, but mostly we just got on with it - and loved it. Think of it as a character building and growth opportunity for your kids.

@Thereluctanttraveller it's time to get assertive. If you are senior and well established enough to be so vital for training then you're senior enough to get tough with your employer. Act like a bloke - they tell rather than asking at work.

Put together a proposal for the training which two days face to face and the rest virtual. Explain the benefits of it being virtual to your senior management- more flexible for other staff, staff can attend different dial in sessions as needed, staff from multiple sites could attend same dial in session etc. Point out the alignment to the work life balance and also diversity goals of the company.

TELL them you are doing it this way. DONT ask. This makes it much more awkward for them to object. People respond to strength at work. And they get particularly rattled by strong, assertive women with their shit together.

It's 2018. This is how training is delivered now, Come on OP - you've clearly got balls, you're a lone parent. Get angry and use them. They're hardly going to fire you over it.

I'm a lone parent to - although mine are little. I refuse non essential work travel good. I know my worth at work and I know ppl respect strength and being calmly assertive. You can do this.

I would just be very direct and say that you can do trips of 3 days max .

And that as a lone parent you cannot leave the children for longer .

We have this a lot at my work too .

Just be assertive and let them handle the breakdown that ensues

You have no other option !

And yes to gro bags !
I don’t know how men manage to be more assertive but they do at my place too

Op I feel like this about travel in my job, to the point where, after I had taken the 'global' role (clue was in the job title ;) I ended up in therapy trying to understand why I'd gone for this job but actually didn't want to / had no intention of travelling!

My therapist was worth her weight in gold and helped me be open with my employer about it. They kept me on and I did have to make an effort to do the more important travel (like once a year!). Today I've travelled with work already 4 times this year and will probably do another trip next month or so. I have 3 under 8 at home. It's a logistical pain in the arse but I've found the more I do it, the easier it becomes. I still hate it though, and can't for the life of me understand the people in my team who literally beg me to be sent travelling!

I think there are a lot of good ideas here. I particularly like the points about people being off sick/on holiday and that if you go in one week to each venue you will miss quite a few people. Also that they will need to train new starters. Who will train new starters in future? If they say people who have already had the training then surely this leaves even more scope for misinformation than if you were to train a trainer?

I used to do a lot of system training and we would have key people in each site trained to train all new starters. The trainers were always involved in the system development or would be part of a period where they had extensive learning. I wrote scripts for all trainers and they then went back out and trained everyone else. Everyone was on the same page. There was no misinformation and every time there was a new starter they got booked onto their local training.

I agree that it's time to get assertive. Your company is very outdated and it seems that this plan means wasting a lot of money. You need to come up with something more cost effective.

It's a pity that your company is not more forward thinking about virtual classrooms using Skype etc.

Look at the money they would save. No hotels expenses, no travel expenses, no providing money for your food while you are away etc.

Also, just to add, the people who did our training were called superusers. So although they didn't design the training or system they became to know everything about it and people could on a day to day basis go to them and ask questions. It spread the knowledge across the company. If something happened to you or the other trainer, then what?

Just take them with you? School breaks up in a few weeks. It will be like lots of little holidays for them in the holidays.

Taking them with me would be difficult, eldest has a summer job so couldn't travel.

Train the trainer never works 100%. There is something about our workplace that means people have a tendency to adapt messages if left to it. Consistency is hard enough to enforce when we do all the training.

In terms of changing mindset, this is difficult as our training is well regarded (I'm not just saying that) - the business area I work for is industry leading in terms of its performance and results, which is considered to be partly due to training in the way we do...

Room capacity dictates 15 is about the biggest group that can be done. Plus it's preferred if we keep it personal etc. So increasing group size is probably out.

I do think my best option is to stick to only doing 3 days at a time. I will miss out on a summer break but thats probably unavoidable.

I'd hate to be away from home even for one night unless if for a holiday, and I don't even have kids. I get the hump if I have to go to an office 20 miles away for training/meetings. I really feel for you.

The doing it for half a week at a time sounds like a fair compromise, but I wonder how a LP with younger children would manage.

Train the trainer never works 100%. There is something about our workplace that means people have a tendency to adapt messages if left to it. Consistency is hard enough to enforce when we do all the training

Then you need to write better lesson plans, and have better assessment packages so that you can monitor if the message has got through. It is possible if you re-think your approach.

What would happen if you broke a leg?

How would you train someone to train others, to get the key messages across?

How would you assess the trainer before they do further training?

Can you set up a super user group to ensure they all get the same messages at the same time for updates?

How would you assess the delegates to ensure that they have the right messages?

Can you skype into the sessions to ensure consistency?

Just keep reiterating that there are better ways of doing things, that mean the learning is more widely shared and if you carefully select the right people to be the super users [don't let the managers make the decision - they often choose the wrong person] it will make your life easier in the long run anyway as they take ownership of the 'whatever it is you are training on'.

I also work in a national organisation and would never dream of rolling out training in this format these days. We use webinars, working groups, surveys etc to get our messages across these days.

It's all very well people saying that the dc are old enough to cope but I really don't think it's recommended to leave dc of that age for weeks at a time, and for good reason. In fact government and NSPCC advice is that children under 16 should not be left alone overnight. And from that I'd then say that up until the age of 18 there should be gradually increasing lengths of absence.
Further, leaving a 14 year old at home for a week would be likely to constitute neglect.

Can you rearrange your working days so that instead of doing five days at each site you do four, or even three, long days - 12 hour days - and as pp have said, split them over a weekend?

At the end of the day, depending on the ages of the dc, you have a good case to say to the employers, actually this wasn't what I signed up for when I took the job and it really cant work for me because of the dc (potentially discriminatory?).

Longer days at each office wouldn't help as training can only take place 9-5 (actually more often only 10-4), so we are very much limited to 2 groups per day at most, given the sessions are 3 hours.

So the training can only take place to fit in with the standard working hours of the employees receiving it, but you are being asked to stay away from home for weeks at a time? How is that fair? Why can’t they do longer hours for the training?

How did the other person who delivers the training get trained? How can you be sure he/she is on message? Or do they do a completely different element of it from you?

Ideal opportunity for your mid/late teens to learn to cope on their own for a few days at a time.

^^ Except. depending on their age, the op may be charged with neglect. But don't let that bother anyone.

I would look at the logistics of taking them
With you. Not sure on the ages of your children but if they can entertain themselves in the hotel if you book one with a leisure centre. Even if it is just the youngest.

If you're senior enough to just have to suck it up, you're senior enough to respond in a senior way if you cannot do it (a business case, an analysis, note the problem but present your solution).

Do NOT say it like you said here "it's not convenient" - this will be perceived (quite rightly) poorly and reflect more trivially than is fair. And it'll be perceived that the problem is you.

Point out the alignment to the work life balance and also diversity goals of the company.

This is the senior response. And add in points around sustainability here. What you're describing isn't sustainable.

At what point would an alternative solution have been proposed by your employer?
You both know certain things aren't sustainable for employees, your task as a senior is to align your threshold / boundary with theirs.

That is the next step here.

Fgs don't let it be known you're taking your kids with you widely if you do. You may work in a company where that's ok, but it would be perceived poorly in the male dominated workplace I'm in (whether that's right or wrong, it's a fact).

I may be being a bit naive here but could you not push for a combination of face to face and e-Learning. I know you say your company want everything face to face but surely this is not cost effective due to the company having to pay for your travel expenses, hotel, cost of having so many staff out of action for days on end?

You could use the justification that you need to meet everyone's learning styles and not everyone is best suited to face to face trainer led delivery. Can't the delegates be set tasks to do which will cover some of the course objectives to get on with either before, between or after sessions?

Oh and just to add when I say elearning I don't mean Skype. I mean online modules, PDFs or PowerPoint that can be accessed by a computer at work by staff

If there is 2 of you that normally share the training, could you maybe take it in turns to go on your own? Although you would be doing it all of it while you there, it would cut the number of weeks away in half.

You say the kids shouldn’t have to ‘cope’ but barring any major health issues, I’m sure the vast majority of mid to late teens would not only be fine fending for themselves for a while, but would actively embrace it! Especially as there’s more than one of them. I’m guessing the youngest is 15-16 if you’re saying mid teens? Kids of that age are absolutely fine being left for periods of time. Wouldn’t you be able to pop back once per week or so?

If you didn’t have the kids OP do you think you’d be keen on doing it? I’m getting the sense it’s more that you don’t want to do it than about the kids, if they were little I’d understand that but at their age they’re not a barrier to you doing this.

I think ultimately this is just something you have to suck up, senior roles that come with a decent salary aren’t paid more for the fun of it, they’re paid more because of extra responsibility required. They’re not asking you to emigrate, just work away from home for a while. It’s five weeks, just over a month, and only three hours away so you could come home for weekends without issue.

However I agree with PP you do need to be putting stuff in place so that if you were off sick work could go on, it’s silly for a company to rest so much on just one or two people when humans sometimes quit or are taken ill. Something to think about going forward. But given that every suggestion PP have made you’ve already thought about and believe it wouldn’t work, clearly you’re just gonna have to do it, and make the most of it.

If you are senior enough, you could always ask them to pay for/subsidise a live in short term nanny while you are away?