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To Meet, Or Not To Meet?
How area companies cope with employees' reluctance to fly
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Business New Haven
10/29/2001
By: Nancy Barnes
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While the commercial aviation industry has been in financial freefall since the events of September 11, general aviation is doing well at the regional airports in south-central Connecticut. Corporate and private travel is up at Tweed-New Haven Airport. Once the initial FAA restrictions were lifted, it seemed as if more people were chartering and flying privately, according to Ken Robinson, whose general aviation company, Robinson Aviation, is based at the airport. Flights out of the airport have climbed modestly, with general aviation flights now numbering between 40 and 50 each day.
“We've seen an increase in corporate and private travel,” says Kurt Sendlein, superintendent of operations at Stratford's Sikorsky Memorial Airport. He puts the increase in transient and non-transient flights at ten to 15 percent. “Companies that don't own aircraft are renting them. We're almost at capacity now. If a local corporation is having a board meeting, the ramps are filled.”
As a result of the September 11 bombings, companies are turning to ways other than commercial travel to conduct business, in some cases reinforcing trends that began with the downturn in the economy months before the terrorist attacks. “At our company, we did everything we could to cut back on commercial travel earlier this year. We really had cut back significantly already. That approach remains,” says Beverly Levy, spokesperson for SNET, whose parent company, SBC Communications Inc., is based in San Antonio, Tex.
Indeed, SBC, which operates in 13 states, is one of the companies whose products serve as a bellwether for the alternatives companies are exploring. In recent weeks, pricing inquiries to SBC regarding videoconferencing have increased by 400 percent, and operator-assisted audio conference calls in which companies have requested 100 or more ports (one individual user per port) has jumped threefold. Before the attacks, the typical port size for a conference call was only five or six.
“Unfortunately, we don't have the data locally,” Levy says. But she is able to say that people who handle conference services in Connecticut have reported a marked increase in number and length of conference calls.
Conference calls and escalating volumes of e-mail are among the practices in play at a number of companies that operate in greater New Haven.
Among them is the retail brands division of SCM Microsystems/Microtech, headquartered in Guilford (its parent company is in Fremont, Calif.). “We have certainly started to evaluate more closely the need for travel and, where possible, we try to find other ways to do business,” says company spokesperson Darby Dye. Dye says that while the events of September 11 are one reason for this process, the desire to curtail costs is also key. The company, which has divisions in Europe, Singapore, India and Japan, had begun to review its travel costs in response to the economic climate before the attacks.
According to Dye, SCM employees personally make the final decision about whether to travel. She adds that this practice has been in place at the company for some time. What the company is doing now is publicizing it more aggressively. “We've made sure that people are aware of the practice since September 11,” she says. “We're promoting it widely. We encourage employees to find other ways” to do business. “The whole nation is a lot more sensitive about flying since September 11,” Dye adds.
No one needs to give members of the securities industry lessons in sensitivity since the terrorist attacks. The industry was hit too hard. For instance, Prudential Securities now makes sure that employees who do not choose to travel know that that decision is perfectly acceptable, according to spokesperson Susan Atran. She adds that counselors held a lot of seminars in the weeks after the disaster. Because the seminars were confined to those who witnessed the incidents at the World Trade Center from the company's lower Manhattan headquarters, employees from other offices did not attend.
A number of companies declined to comment for this article, preferring not to discuss their employees' travel. The North American pharmaceutical division of Bayer Corp., in West Haven, has another reason for not speaking up. The company, which makes the antibiotic that is in such demand because of the widening anthrax scare, has expanded manufacturing at its Connecticut factory to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“We're tied up with Cipro at this time,” is the only remark a weary company representative could manage (see related story, page 12).
The worrisome matters at so many companies - an upended economy and constant adjustments in security - make those who are able to operate their businesses from their homes feel more secure than most.
Woody Ford, a designer and photographer who conducts much of his ONE Company USA marketing business from his New Haven home, has clients and manufacturers in Canada as well as up and down the East Coast. Staying on top of the technologies that speed up his communications is what matters to him.
Ford sends images and project information by e-mail, backing up the designs and quotations he puts together by express deliveries. (“Federal Express. How bad could that be?” he says.) If he travels, he does so by train or car. Trips by Metro-North Railroad to New York City don't faze him - “It's just a normal thing that I do.”
Those who continue to take care of their customers by flying commercially are finding that the experience can be surprisingly tranquil. Pat Packard, a marketing and alliance manager with GE Medical Systems Information Technology in Wallingford, is a veteran of flying in unsettled times. He was in Salt Lake City when Desert Storm began in 1991, and he says that the concourse at the Utah airport was immediately closed to non-ticketed passengers.
Now that policy is in place, again, at airports small and large across the country. “It's beautiful for a frequent traveler like me because there are no kids, no relatives, no aunts and uncles,” Packard says. “No one except ticketed passengers goes onto the concourse where the gates are.”
Packard says that when he flew from Bradley Airport in Windsor Locks to New Orleans three weeks ago he arrived at the airport quite early, anticipating long lines and difficulty parking. He found virtually no lines at the ticket counter, but says he had to wait ten minutes longer than usual at the security check-in.
GE implemented a week-long freeze on all travel immediately after the terrorist attacks. “And then word came out to use your discretion and, if you're uncomfortable, speak with your supervisor or a counselor,” Packard recounts. “And then the word came out that it's back to business as usual.”
A 12-year GE veteran, Packard is accustomed to using the communications devices that SNET's statistics indicate are of enhanced interest to companies now. He teleconferences two or three times a week, and reports that real-time exchanges provide an useful forum for presentations. But he allows that there are also occasions, such as times when he must identify and address client problems, when only face-to-face meetings will do.
Even SNET's Levy, who typically occupies an office in her company's New Haven headquarters and flies only two or three times a year, found herself travelling to her company's headquarters in San Antonio earlier this month on a trip that had been scheduled long before the September 11 attack. Speaking from a stopover in St. Louis between Bradley and San Antonio, Levy says she found her travel without incident.
“Other than showing my driver's license and answering a few additional questions, things seem pretty normal,” she says. “This is a semi-annual meeting that requires that we be face-to-face.”
Her remarks echo those of SCM's Dye: “I don't think there is any replacement for face-to-face meetings in some cases,” she says. “You can augment them. You can minimize them. There's no replacement for a face-to-face meeting if you need to take business relationships to a deeper level.”
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