Some staff love to rort company expense systems while others are victims of it, says David Weller
The expenses issue brings out some interesting responses in some employees, which psychoanalysts may find of much interest.
It also highlights common misunderstandings between staff in the public sector and their perceptions of what really happens in the private sector.
Such an arid subject is actually rich in insights into the human psyche. Disputes often end up on a Human Resources desk.
Through experience it seems that some people get as much satisfaction at rorting the system for a few dollars as they do with their most exciting job-related daily task.
There are of course deliberate rip-offs. Take the traveller who claims tips of 15 per cent in cash spent in a restaurant in the US who would rather endure the opprobrium of not actually paying it there, to the joy of receiving it on his expenses refund back here in New Zealand.
Then there is the "rules were unclear" response which somehow allowed a senior manager to upgrade to first class on a flight to London from Auckland because business class was full.
Then again there was a salesman who enjoyed a flight to London from Auckland via New York on Concorde - because his calculations told him that he could actually save money for the company if he got there faster. He also fell into the category of hoping that by having done it first - and being found out later - he could confess ignorance of the exact policy.
There was also the person entitled to business class travel who travelled economy to Europe from Hong Kong and sent his wife and child on a five-day tour around Europe using the difference between business and economy tickets.
A lot of these kind of issues represent employee ingenuity versus no extra cost to the company.
However on a day-to-day basis people reflect their own personalities in their expense claims. There is the person who fastidiously keeps expenses up to date and claims everything no matter how small.
Or the the person who has to be reminded to submit claims several times and is carrying the cash flow of the company on their own back by not doing so. And the person who loses receipts and does not claim even if the claim would have been refunded.
Or the person who does not ask for a cash advance for an overseas trip, then waits months incurring interest charges waiting for actual exchange rates to ensure he/she gets fully refunded.
Expenses policy is always open to debate and often represents the interface between employee happiness or not. Requests for babysitter fees to allow an employee to attend a company function? If the employee was happy in the role then this would not be raised. But an unhappy employee who sees attending a company function as an imposition may well raise such a claim.
High-sounding statements such as the employee "will be no better off or worse off if he did not travel" are harder to implement than the statement suggests.
For instance, do you provide lunch to a person who travels to another site out of town. Some companies do, even if that site has a company canteen just like their home site.
They do on the basis that he is travelling out of town and does not have the opportunity to bring his or her lunch to work. Companies that don't say that he is no worse off than if he was at his home site because a canteen is provided at both locations.
Public sector employees in my experience seem to think that senior private sector staff have expense accounts that they can do with as they like. I believe that scenario is very rare to non-existent.
What actually happens is that some senior private sector staff do naturally entertain customers and submit receipts. It is subject to scrutiny as to who the customer was and the value to the organisation of such entertainment.
Hardly what you would call open slather. Very little spouse entertainment is ever done in my experience.
Shareholders in companies equate to taxpayers in the public sector in their oversight role, to some extent. However do we want government officials to entertain others?
There are some ways to make staff feel very good and still keep within a budget. For instance a company policy that gives out a guideline amount for a daily spend or per diem based on three meals - but will allow accumulation to let the employee to have a very extravagant meal if the cost remains within the total for the week.
So fast food on four nights and dinner at Antoine's on the fifth night. Maybe that's what Jim Anderton thought the policy was when he claimed pizza for three at $1000.
In my experience employees in New Zealand tend to be very conservative in their spending habits compared with other countries. Being dropped off at the airport by a family member rather than claiming a taxi expense is but one example that happens here.
Finally - if the expenses issue was an easy matter then all companies would have a similar policy. They do not.
* David Weller was previously a human resources director in New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore in both the private and public sectors.
