As if our business lives weren’t stressful enough, now we have a new anxiety to cope with. It’s become more difficult, at least for the time being, to tell if you’re being slighted when people refuse your meeting invitation.  Corporate mandated reductions in travel have changed the landscape of business meetings and leave a lot of workers scratching their heads as they ponder ways to be both respectful and productive.

Around the world, instructions to curtail business travel are trickling down from on high.  The new policies are being driven by economic and environmental concerns and force people to at least consider alternatives to traditional face-to-face meetings which require travel.  However, it’s going to take some time for everyone to learn the etiquette of this system.  It’s not only new, but conflicting signals are making it hard for the average worker to understand the subtleties.

One the one hand, workers are being told not to travel by their manager, and on the other hand they see company executives jetting around the world to attend events, conferences and meetings as if nothing has changed.  Vital operations meetings where important and delicate negotiations or decisions are expected are canceled, while Internet working groups continue to gather in exotic locations to essentially read documents aloud.  This gets quite confusing to the average joe.

And, in the end, everyone suffers in confused silence.  Executives are left to wonder if their counterpart is slighting them when their meeting is declined, managers are frustrated when coworkers suggest email as an alternative to an actual meeting on their pet project, and the average worker who is being squeezed the hardest just wants to scream when she sees her VP on TV sitting in the corporate seats at the Final Four.

The comedy and confusion we’re experiencing is reminiscent of the episode of Seinfeld when Elaine asks Putty if he’s “sponge worthy.”  Do you have a process in place to logically evaluate travel priority?  Are travel restrictions impacting your business?  How are you coping with the changes?