Ttc - don’t want to travel

[PurpleH]

My work involves travel and I am ttc. For a number of reasons (some involving the places I travel to being on the zika list) I don’t want to be doing this. In fact, I am actually ok with giving up business travel if possible as i am pretty sure once I have little ones I won’t want that added pressure.

So what to do? I can’t tell work I am ttc (although I had a MC a few months ago that only my direct line manager knows about so I a,pm sure he could guess). I don’t want to change company as my maternity benefits will be good here. I basically want to change job/hand over travel, but how to approach it....any tips most welcome! Am I just honest and see what happens and hope they understand?!

If travel is in your job description and/or contract, then I think you may have a hard time persuading your employer's that TTC is a reason to stay home, but it is difficult to say without understanding what the impact on the business might be. You may have a point with places where zica is endemic, but otherwise you may struggle.

If you want to continue with your current employer and your job involves travel, your employer will expect you to continue to do this whether you are ttc or have a family. My role involves travel and that continued when I returned to work after maternity leave.

Are you saying you don't want to travel or just want to scale back travel? If your core role responsibilities need you to travel regularly, for example if you're in sales/marketing, then it will be difficult to justify if it means you cant perform your role duties.

If some of the travel is nice-to- have or non-priority, can you be selective to cut those out and use technology where possible. Then it leaves you with just the must-haves. I'm guessing, so you'd need to inject reality for yourself whether this is workable.

There's little point going to your manager with a problem and no solution, so in terms of what should you say, to gain traction you'll have to say what is possible and as non- impactful as possible (to be candid they care less about your family plans and more about how you'd make it work with less, or no, business travel).

Do you believe there a genuine health risk in the countries you visit? A responsible employer will not force an employee to put their personal health at risk. What is their policy on this?

Can you use technology TC/VTC a lot more?

You will have to find an alternative role with your company that they need someone for and which doesn't involve travel, and apply for that/convince them to give you it.

You can't just go "sorry, I don't want to perform this important/essential element of my role any more". (Almost) nobody likes business travel, it's boring, tiring and dislocating.

I kept travelling while pregnant with DC1, but when I came back I was able to go into a different role not requiring travel because I had skills they could make use of there and they had a genuine need.

It sounds like travel is a really central part of your role, so I’m not sure how it would work. Are there alternative roles you could apply for?