When is it ethical for you as an employee to have a side business?
WHEN IT DOESN’T COMPETE WITH YOUR FULL-TIME JOB
NEVER 12% 3% 83% 50%
WHEN YOUR PARTNER
OR SPOUSE IS UNEMPLOYED
TALK TO THE CO-WORKER DIRECTLY, AND IF YOU’RE NOT SATISFIED WITH THE ANSWER, GO TO HR
WHEN YOU BELIEVE YOU AREN’T PAID ENOUGH
2%
You believe a co-worker has violated your organization’s code of ethics. Do you?
TALK TO THE CO-WORKER DIRECTLY
IMMEDIATELY REPORT THE ACTION TO HR
14% 26% DO NOTHING
9%
me getting gifts and sullying the waters about what is the best [destination, site, or facility] for my event. Let’s not muddy the waters by somebody giving you a gift and trying to buy you.” More often than not, whether a practice can be considered
ethical is a fine distinction. Breiter offers the example of a sin- gle bottle of wine being given to her during a site visit, as opposed to a case of wine being sent to her office. Which, if either, is acceptable? Possibly the bottle of wine, but almost certainly not the case. “Sometimes the lines are razor-thin,” Breiter said, “and sometimes the lines are big and bold.” Kirklen raises another distinction. “If it’s a legitimate piece
of business, [a fam trip is] warranted—I mean, obviously you want to get a feel for the location,” he said. “It’s just a matter of how much is warranted, and ensuring you’re using your
“We’re not members of Congress. Even in the event of an ethical breach, the reach CMPs and other planners have is not extensive into the commu- nity, industry, etc. Personally, I feel the debate over meetings ethics has been inflamed by medical meetings as well as government meetings—but, as a whole, is a nonissue. Let’s not create controversy and self-regulation where none is needed.”
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moral compass.” For example, Kirklen thinks that a one-day site visit to a location makes perfect sense, whereas a three-day site visit “obviously would not.” Some suppliers have tried to make the decision of whether
to participate in a fam trip easier for planners by emphasizing the event’s educational elements and downplaying or eliminat- ing activities that might be seen as flashy, luxurious, or exces- sive. “When they’re here [on a fam trip], it’s really educa- tional,” said Rob Osterberg, director of sales for the Palm Springs Desert Resort Communities Convention and Visitors Authority. “Certainly we are showing them the various resorts …and the various venues and things of interest out here, but we’ll also have the airport do an educational component to our fams, so it’s not a boondoggle.” Osterberg added: “I think it’s unfair that some who don’t understand our industry, or don’t ask the questions about what this program is about or how it works, just kind of have a preset notion of what it’s about—and it’s incorrect. More so than ever, planners’ time is very limited, and when they are doing something, they want to get something out of it.” Reward points. Another bone of contention has to do with
hotel points and frequent-flier miles. Our survey asked, “Is it ethical for planners to keep the points (from airlines, hotels, etc.) that they accumulate through their professional work?” More than 71 percent said that it was—6 percent more than said it was okay to have the costs of a site visit comped. The higher percentage finding this practice acceptable could be a result of the generally widespread practice in the United States of business travelers being allowed to keep points for their own personal use as a tacitly acknowledged perk. But that doesn’t mean the practice is ethically blemish-free for planners. “I had a client that had a monthly meeting at a local
hotel,” O’Neill said.“We’d always done it there, and it had been pretty standard, the same thing every month. The hotel came to me and said, ‘We can give you reward points for hold- ing this meeting here.’ I didn’t see a problem with it. It wasn’t