Some Employees Balk at Flying,
Creating Conflicts With Bosses
09/18/2001
The Wall Street Journal
As Joie Pacifico opened her regular Monday staff meeting yesterday with a
rundown of key
projects, she looked around the table and asked who was willing to fly to
the Midwest to meet with
a big customer.
"Gosh," said someone to a wave of nervous laughter, "you mean get on a
plane?"
Can employees tell their boss they don't want to fly?
Officially, companies say yes. Indeed, Ms. Pacifico's firm, New
Jersey-based Avaya Inc., which
provide business-communications systems and services to large
corporations, has told employees
to avoid all but essential travel until Oct. 1, when the country's
air-travel system will presumably
returns to a more normal state of affairs. Many other companies have
implemented similar policies.
Even after Oct. 1, "I won't make people fly," says Ms. Pacifico, Avaya 's
vice president of managed
services.
But bosses and companies are likely to be tolerant and understanding for
only so long. Already
signs of tension and conflict are emerging in the workplace between
skittish employees and bosses
determined to get back to business.
A woman at a West Coast company who asked not to be identified last week
missed an important
meeting, choosing instead to give blood and attend a service at church.
Her boss was mad, telling
co-workers the employee "had better things to do than actually show up at
work."
Such bosses may be heartless, but companies, especially those that depend
on travel to manage
far-flung operations, sugget there will be a limit to their patience. TJX
Cos., the discount-clothing
retailer that operates T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, lost seven female
employees, four of them mothers
aboard American Flight 11 when it crashed into the World Trade Center. The
company called all its
employees traveling for business to make suensure they were safe and to
tell them to stay put until
it was safe to fly. But with 1,500 stores and 80,000 employees world-wide,
"our business requires a
great deal of travel," says Ted English, the company's president and CEO.
While a TJX spokeswoman says the company will be "sensitive" to employee
fears, she adds: "If
an individual is no longer able to fly for whatever reason, that person
might consider a different
position. People are going to have to decide whether they are going to go
on with their lives."
Kevin Sheridan, who run a 19-person consulting firm in Chicago, says
bosses need to balance the
grieving needs of employees and the challenges of a worsening economy. His
firm shut down most
of last week but reopened today.
"Part of the employer's responsibility is to articulate to his or her
employees that this is not just a
demanding boss saying we need to get back to work but that regaining our
focus is important to
his or her job security," he says. Even before the attacks, says Mr.
Sheridan, his business was
slowing. "I want to make sure that down the road we are not laying people
off."
But families may have a different view. Carlos Asilis, a strategist for
J.P. Morgan Chase, says that
he still plans to fly to Hong Kong on Sunday because he has important
meetings with Asian
clients. But he says that a number of his colleagues are being urged by
their families not to fly.
Many remain shaken not only by the Tuesday's terrorist attacks but by the
bomb scare at Grand
Central Station on Thursday that forced J.P. Morgan Chase and other
companies in the area to
evacuate offices.
At some companies yesterday, employees showed a willingness, even
eagerness, to travel. A.T.
Kearney, the management-consulting unit of EDS Corp., Plano, Tex., said
calls to its corporate
travel office yesterday were three times higher than on a typical Monday.
The calls were a
combination of new bookings and modifications of existing bookings, says
spokesman Paul Raab.
"A.T. Kearney consultants who did not travel to their client sites last
week are planning to go to
their client sites this week," he surmised.
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