Time was when an opportunity to travel with work could be deemed a perk of the job, or at least a necessary evil that could be tolerated because the benefits of all those miles were self-evident. Those days are vanishing, along with much else as the whole commute, nine-to-five, office-cubicle fandango twirls toward the end of its useful life.
Reasons for hopping onto planes are disappearing fast and those for getting on other forms of transport are also much diminished. Today, all too often, we travel in hope rather than expectation, fly in the face of sense, and take the train in vain.
There is no shortage of reasons to give the business traveller pause before reaching for the passport and foreign currency. The current political climate makes travelling neither pleasant nor easy. This is particularly the case with the US and its bewildering visa demands, extended check-in times, hostile customs questioning, and inspections of laptops, shoes, baggage and whatever next.
The current raised security levels will doubtless see many Americans declining to visit the UK. A tragic side-story to the recent 25th anniversary of the PC was the reminder that several on the original development team died together in a plane accident. After that, IBM instituted a widely-copied policy of seating staff on separate flights wherever possible.
Now on-board use of electronic devices is being dragged into question – with the potential loss of several hours' working time – crossing the Pond is not considered worth it for many of us either.
Meetings spanning shorter distances can also be hard to justify. Crossing London can take two hours by car or public transport, and even on trains the opportunity to work may be limited.
Conferences, exhibitions and other congregations are also often of questionable value and the suspicion lingers that sending staff to a distant site is a flypaper to maintain attendance and attention.
The common response to this is that face-to-face contact is irreplaceable and that nothing can compete with the firm handshake, meeting of eyes and ink on foolscap. This won't wash with incoming employees or even with older staff given effective tools to work across remote links.
Web-based conferencing is cheap and effective and eviscerates a ton of fat in the business model. More advanced tools, such as Teliris's GlobalTable, HP's extraordinary Halo conferencing system, and Microsoft's RoundTable panoramic cameras, will allow more intuitive usage just as email, IM, avatars, remote-access software and other tools have softened the edges of internet communications.
The old model of business collaboration is broken. Firms are less tolerant of slack and wastage, and are demanding promises of a return on investment.
All of this is not to say there is no room for human interaction to build trust, improve your personal networking reach and ease daily chores. But soft-shoe shuffles and golf-course confabs should not be mixed up with meetings that are about decision making between buyers, sellers and partners.
