How Can We Balance Travel Policy Fairness Between Asia and Europe Offices?

Hi, my company is in Asia with headquarters in Europe. Currently, our travel policy in Asia and Europe states that any staff who travel on flights lasting more than 4 hours are entitled to business class.

Policy Change Considerations

Our Asia company management is considering changing the policy as providing business class entitlement for flights over 4 hours within Asia is deemed too costly. The policy in Europe, however, will remain unchanged. The Asia management aims to strike a fair balance and is reluctant to extend the flight duration requirement to 6 or 10 hours, as it would create disparities between the Asia and Europe company staff.

Entitlement Criteria

Furthermore, they prefer not to base entitlement on job designation, such as granting business class to senior management and economy class to junior management.

Seeking Suggestions

As the HR representative, I am faced with a dilemma, as there is no perfect solution that would satisfy everyone in the company. Do you have any suggestions that I could propose to my management? Your input would be greatly appreciated as I aim to demonstrate my problem-solving abilities to address this staff travel benefits and policy issue.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

This case is a typical Asian business mindset that views Asians as inferior beings compared to Westerners (Europeans/Americans) and therefore believes they should be given fewer benefits than their counterparts at the headquarters. The allegation of cost is a very shallow alibi to justify the intent and modify an existing international company policy.

Although compensation and benefits are generally adjusted to regional locations, there are companies (especially those that are 100% foreign-owned subsidiaries) that implement HQ pay and benefit policies in all their offices/subsidiaries. This is the area that you have to look into very carefully. Generally, local partners/investors feel a certain sense of excessiveness when pay and benefits in Europe/America are given unilaterally to local employees, including executives.

When a multinational/international company decides to adopt and implement its HQ policies for all its offices worldwide (regardless of operational location), any policy modification that would tend to distinguish employee benefits would be suspect.

In a previous company, our EVP decided to change the benefit package of our engineers sent to the HQ on an interim assignment (for reasons of excessiveness compared to local standards). The reduced benefits created a problem of unfairness (and discrimination) when the employees later learned that they were given less than their counterparts. The engineers felt worse when they were told that it was their home (local) office that made the changes. So, the HQ blamed the local subsidiary for the problem and made them pay the withheld benefits differential—which were eventually given back to our engineers.

Best regards.

Regards