Questions for my fellow EAs out there:
1. How many of you travel for your job? If so, are there stipulations?
2. My team is having an 2-day offsite meeting in another city and many folks outside of our team are all traveling in for it. Some are only attending for an hour. My exec told me yesterday I couldn’t attend (after weeks of asking him), citing that we couldn’t have excessive hours of OT (maybe 4 hrs). I do not feel valued as a team member.
Should I bring it up or let it go?
Tacky. Tacky. Tacky. And more Tacky. Your 4 hours of OT are going to break the bank?
Mentor
OP are you sure it would only be 4 hours of OT? When I travel with my team for events, bc I’m hourly they also have to pay for the travel time, and maybe this is what your boss is thinking about too. For example if I travel from east to west coast and the event is on a Monday, they have to pay me for mileage to and from the airport, all the time I spend at the airport including the 2 hours before plus the 5 hour flight. Just one flight ends up being a 10 hour day, so if I had to fly on Sunday to be there for Monday morning, that’s an extra 10 hours they have to pay me OT for. I usually try to flex my time if the event is not a full week, like I’ll take Friday off to recover from the flight. However, if the event is the full week, they end up paying out about 20-25 hours in OT as I’m paid for those 10 hours plus the hour before and hour after each day I spend setting and cleaning up as well as any after hours activities planned, (dinners, team building, etc). Not saying this would be your scenario since it sounds like you could certainly flex your time to cover the OT for this one, but maybe your leader doesn’t realize that or is thinking this would take more OT than it actually does to support. I would have a deeper conversation with them about it and try to mitigate their concerns for your attendance as the budget thing is likely handed down from the top and maybe not their decision. If you can alleviate those concerns and also share how not being invited is making you feel, maybe they would be more receptive to your attendance.
Were you coordinating the off-site? If so, then I would bring it up.
You have leverage since you coordinated it. The reasons you will give for your attendance:
You are an asset and point person
You will be there to keep things on track and on time
You will be there to troubleshoot as things happen (because things always happen).
This happened with a company that I worked for several years ago.
If you coordinated the hotel room block and meeting rooms make sure that they have your Marriott/Hilton/Hyatt rewards information so that you can get points for everything. The points will be useful when you plan your vacation
Oooh I just noticed where you work! ❤️ how is it working for National Geographic? I’ve always wondered
Enjoy the time they are away and Get paid for nothing F them!
Mentor
I travel with my team. The option is available everywhere they go. Often times I’m asked to go and honestly I can’t because I don’t have anyone to stay with my kids. I am paid overtime for hours traveled outside regular working hours. However, I don’t always put in for them. On the other hand though, I have worked with teams where I was never asked to travel and likely was not even allowed due to company policy.
Most traveling employees are salary exempt and therefore are not paid overtime. Perhaps it’s an option for you to agree that you do not want to be paid for time spent traveling and this would alleviate the OT issue. I’m not sure if there would be any legal implications that would prevent this as being an option, if not though maybe it’s a work around.
I never had to have the conversation with my leader about being paid the OT or not, so there was never an agreement that I would not submit this time. I’ve just opted on my own on occasion not to submit and others I have opted to submit. For me personally I decide based on what I’m doing during that time, if I’m working the whole flight from my phone or laptop I claim it. If I’m sleeping, I don’t. However, I think if it was quid pro quo the only way I could go was to not claim my time there could be some legal implications involved with that and that might be your leaders concern. It’s a challenging time right now for a lot of organizations. So many Lay offs and workforce reduction efforts going on. I would handle this delicately if the answer is still no despite your best effort to mitigate the concerns. Often times the choice to not pay OT is not coming from your boss, it’s handed from the top down as budget constraints and it’s your leaders job to insure they don’t go over. I don’t know if this is your situation, perhaps you support the CEO in which case they are the top. However, if they’re not I would take this into consideration for however you decide to handle
Interesting… I never travel, and don’t know any EA’s that do. We plan everything from home/office. I wouldn’t really think to go but if I went to everything for all six people I would never get any actual work done. I don’t have the time to spend 2-3 days running around at an off-site when other execs need assistance. I’m surprised so many of you travel and feel this way, but it sounds like roles are a bit different?
Yeah that's insane. I recently planned an offsite for a team I've been supporting for over a year, and had they told me I couldn't go I would've been extremely bitter.
This happened to me during our last offsite. I organised it from A-Z in a different time zone and was then told I wasn't allowed to go and had to handle it remotely (working until midnight most nights with the time difference trying to resolve snags as.. there are always snags..). I also wasn't paid for any of the OT I did.
This second offsite was in a different location and an even bigger time difference so I told them that I wouldn't be working into the evening if anything went wrong. Magic. I was invited along this time because they realised they actually needed my help..! Sometimes people are ungrateful and degrading and I honestly did feel pretty degraded when they said I couldn't go. As if I wasn't part of the team or something especially after putting so many long hours into the organisation of the event.