Businesses have a corporate duty of care and a legal requirement to properly prepare their employees for travel and support them during and after their trips.

If this is not robustly demonstrated or carried out then the consequences for individual employees and the company as a whole can be severe, resulting in legal proceedings and reputational damage which ultimately impact profits.

Duty of care is becoming a focus, partly because we are increasingly aware of the world’s dangers, but also because many employees are travelling to emerging markets such as Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and these markets present greater risks to travellers.

How do companies demonstrate a robust duty of care to travellers?

TRAVEL POLICY

A corporate travel policy must clearly demonstrate Duty of Care and include the following:

1) The highest possible degree of safety and security for employees.

2) Risk Assessment process – all business related travel to risk-rated countries is subject to a risk assessment.

PRIOR TO TRAVEL

A risk assessment process determines whether more support is required for business travellers prior to travel.

It is preferable to have access to an up-to-date country travel risk tool to risk assess trips and monitor situations in the event that decisions need to be made about staff.

EMERGENCY RESPONSE

It is also vital that the travel policy outlines what employees should do in the event of an incident, who to call and how to behave. Employee responses to incidents need to be in line with the company’s corporate crisis management plan which is, in turn, informed to some extent by the insurance policies that are in place.