The "Glamour" of Business Travel

Many people I know, who don’t travel for work seem to think that business travel is very exciting and glamorous. Many people, on the other hand who, like me, travel a lot for work, can’t seem to stop complaining about how tough it is. While I have travelled for work throughout my career, in the last 6 months since I started heading Outotec’s aluminium business I have travelled more than ever – juggling continuously between customers, Outotec’s aluminium teams in Germany and Canada, and Helsinki, where I still (technically) live and where our headquarters is. So is it truly necessary, and is there glamour? Necessary – very; Glamour - at times, but with a price to pay.

Most international companies have invested a lot of money into advanced video systems, and with the integration of Skype into the Office 365 environment, organizing conference calls with video and content is easier than ever. Many say, therefore, that travelling just for the sake of meeting people should no longer be necessary. At Outotec, we have gradually learned how to use these systems (without anymore spending the first 15 minutes ensuring that everyone is on the line and can hear each other), and this has naturally reduced the need for face to face interaction. Yet, in a B2B environment like ours, building relationships with our customers is crucial, and this can’t be done without shaking the other person’s hand.  Despite many wishes otherwise, this also applies within a company – we’re expected to work constantly in virtual teams combining people from different units.  In my view, without having met properly in the beginning, we just can’t achieve the same level of trust and productivity. I have been spending a lot of time on the road visiting our main markets, meeting our customers and also our own people. Now after half a year, I can honestly say that all of these trips have been highly worthwhile from a business perspective. I have also remembered what I love most about my job – interacting with customers.  This means that there will be a lot more time spent on the road in 2019 as well.

So what’s all the glamour about? I admit I have always enjoyed travelling – even the sensation of a plane taking off. Often times sitting on a flight is the only time I can try to isolate myself from the outside world – no emails, no phones, just some time to sit back and think, read or watch a movie. Sometimes being just by myself in a hotel room also provides for some time to rejuvenate. Airlines and hotels have certainly learned how to tap into peoples’ need for “free benefits” through their loyalty programs. Sure, a glass of good wine at a lounge or a bath in a nice hotel room can sometimes feel quite nice after a long day of meetings.

Then there’s the seeing of new places and cultures. While there is usually very little time for anything else than sitting either at a meeting room, restaurant with colleagues or customers, or in your hotel room alone, I try to sneak in a couple of hours just for myself during a trip whenever possible. Experiences this Autumn like visiting the Main Souq in Kuwait, climbing the Great wall of China, spending a weekend in Rio between workweeks in Brazil, or having an amazing but simple seafood meal in Saudi bring me a lot of energy. Also, constantly meeting new people from different cultures, seeing how business is done in different parts of the world brings a lot of perspective. It means I don’t have to rely on second hand insights, but rather I can draw my own conclusions. Visiting customers in China, for example, has shown me first hand how it’s not just about quick industrialization any more, but environmental matters are really being taken increasingly seriously.

But then there are the many drawbacks. Like most people at least in Finland, I’m growing extremely concerned about the state of our environment, and I realise that from a personal impact perspective flying is one of the worst things you can do. While the jury is still out on if I should count emissions caused by my business travel to my own “personal quota”, I do try to make positive choices. One is to fly with airlines that pay attention to these things (Finnair, I find has a quite a credible program for reducing its impact), and what I’m increasingly looking into, is how well different CO2 compensation schemes actually work. As we know, in the short term, and thinking practically, we should equally be reducing our emissions but also investing into ways to tie up our CO2 which often requires an investment. I’m impressed by my previous employer McKinsey’s efforts to become carbon neutral – they spend money to compensate for all flights taken by employees – and believe this is what we should all start doing (note to our sustainability department). Over time, I believe we should start taxing carbon globally and invest the proceeds into technology transfer and carbon capture.

Then there’s the economy class travel. At Outotec, like in most industrial companies nowadays, we’re very conscious about travel cost and therefore Economy class is the norm. Surely sometimes one comes across good offers where upgrading to a premium cabin can make sense, but I also try to always think about travel cost as if I were spending my own business’s money. When you do the math, I can rarely find the justification to spend even several hundred euros per hour more just to stretch my legs (the champagne doesn’t count since on night flights I always try to sleep anyway). What this leads to is many extremely uncomfortable nights. Especially the two 3-4 hours redeyes in sequence that it often takes to travel from Europe to the Persian Gulf can be a real killer. Trying to hit the gym before or after travelling is quite important to prevent health issues.

Travelling also makes it more challenging to manage the team. Outotec is a mid size, but extremely global company. Even our core aluminium team of ~100 professionals is a business that runs across the entire world. While I try to always take calls even when travelling, the idea is not to travel to Brazil and then be on the phone to Germany all the time but rather spend time with the customers and local team there. It becomes therefore quite a challenge to maintain a regular schedule of reviews, let alone trying to do anything creative in a team setting, when either me, our sales team, or our project delivery team are constantly somewhere. Here Skype is actually a real blessing – it enables you to manage things at the home office while travelling!

By far the biggest downside, however, is time spent away from the family. Especially after having children, the missing and amount of bad conscience I have felt about not being there for my child, or not helping my wife more is immense. When taking this latest job, we made a conscious choice together that we will have to spend quite a bit of time apart at least in the beginning, but still it has been tougher than I thought for both of us. I have come to cherish just the “normal” weeks when I can bring and pick up our daughter from daycare, take our dog out for a long evening walk, and do the cooking - things, which I guess are what people often would like to run away from by going on a business trip.

It’s often when I travel with family that some of the loyalty perks like upgrades and lounges really pay off though – When travelling with small kids shorter queues or your free morning porridge can really make life a bit easier. I’ve also managed to pay many a family weekend trip entirely with points and this seems to at least partially bring some understanding for the time I’ve spent away from home.

With all of this said, thinking back on my career so far, I notice that I have been making implicit choices to make sure I can have an international career and travel for work – and the combination of being smaller, but truly global is certainly why I find Outotec an exciting company to work for. While I hope I’ll never end up like George Clooney in “Up in the Air” – I certainly would feel grounded if all the moving about would all of a sudden come to an end.