Less Travel. More Ethics – The return of the “Safe pair of hands”?

When I lived in Hong Kong in the early to late nineties there was a concept named “a safe pair of hands”. What it meant is an employee, usually in an executive but not necessarily in a senior executive position, who could be relied on for “doing the right thing” even whilst no one was watching his or her back.

From what I understood at the time, this was inherited from the previous generation in business in Hong Kong, then a Crown Colony. As I was told by officers of HSBC (still referred to as the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank) communications with the headquarters in London were limited. Each one of the top officers in Hong Kong had the right to include three lines of writing in a collective telex sent weekly. More detailed instructions went by boat. A question was put in a letter itself sealed in an envelope itself put in a bag and the whole on a boat…and back. Needless to say, the local employees of the bank felt …autonomous about their decisions. By the time a refusal came from London, if it did, action had been taken already.

The key point in this, and the reason why the system worked, is trust. The directors of the bank knew that even without tight supervision, the local directors and officers would make decisions and act in the best interest of the bank.

Why is that relevant in present days ?

Because for decades since, the long arm management of subsidiaries relied on a combination of instant communication (faxes, then emails, videoconferencing) and also and importantly travel, the occasional physical presence of local officers visiting the headquarters and of top management visiting the premises of the subsidiary.

That model no longer exists. The Covid, initially a reason, has become an excuse to avoid physical travel as much as possible. To cut costs, but also as a matter of personal protection. Who wants to run the risk of being stranded in another country and not be able to fly back home if occurs another virus, war or other black swan event ?

That can work for narrow business purposes: a subsidiary or associated company in a far away location can be reasonably well enough managed from a distance to expand sales.

But came a change with the introduction of the social responsibility of enterprises “Environmental, Social and Governance” aka ESG, and the need for compliance with sets and standards emanating not just from within the organisation but from outside the organisation.

The required nature of trust in the local officers moved back from being just business linked to being personal: a matter of character. Only a local director or officer who is “a good egg” can be trusted to protect the group of companies against the adverse consequences of breaching a ESG principle.

The expatriate who lived and worked in an overseas country for a number of years, is permanently settled, has been tried and tested for his or her moral ethics, loyalty and trustworthiness, should be back in high demand.

Whether that person is Western in an Asian context, or Asian in a Western context makes no difference. What matters is that within a wider understanding of what is implied by legal compliance, that person has a key role to play. Again.

The revenge, or rather the return, of the good old “good egg” in the basket.