Preventing Expenses Scandal

You may have read about the expenses scandal that has been furling over several British Parliament Ministers in the last few months, causing lots of embarrassment and stress for those involved and loss of confidence in the public citizens against the government.

This issue has led many of the business to rethink about their expense management policies.

In many instances, the violators did not violate the law but the items reimbursed were considered morally and politically incorrect, leading to some of the members involved stepping down from their post!

It reinforces my believe that where possible, management should communicate explicilty in a clear manner on the guidelines of what’s clamiable and what’s out of bounds.

For instance, I was drafting some policies around IT mobility services last year. I was pondering if I should include home broadband into the scope. From a service delivery point of view, we have clearly stated that this is not a IT-supported service. Should I also explicitly state that if this expense is reimbursable? After considerable musing, I decided that it is important to be clear about it even though it is more about indirect spend management (usually a finance responsibility) than IT service management (Finance may think this is a IT responsibility since it is a IT service, it doesnt matter to me, as long as someone steps up). I want to make it clear that I am not leaning either way if this is an reimbursable expense. I am, after a common and clear guideline for the employees to adhere to.

So, after drafting it, I had it presented to the senior management team and the collective decision was, no employee is eligible for it and every case was to go through a exception approval process (It could have gone the other way to allow employees from certain job functions to claim the expense). So far, there were a few approved exceptions (e.g. a group of mobile employees who do not have a permanent desk, they were provided with a fixed amount to get themselves a mobile broadband solution which covers their home too).

Today, the management team is glad that the policy was already in place helping in a little way to keep the indirect expenses low (it always about these little things that we do, right?).

So, what’s the lesson learnt? Make your policies and guidelines as explicit and as clear as possible. If you are not sure why your fellow peers are not doing anything about it, just step up and do it, if you believe it is the right thing to do. Most important, get your senior executive team to walk out with a collectively decision on the policy and be the sponsor!

And of course, making every one’s expense claims transparent helps!