What is the best way to minimize travel risks?

Citation

Hackworth, R. (2013), "What is the best way to minimize travel risks?", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 12 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2013.37212eaa.005

What is the best way to minimize travel risks?

Article Type: Q&A From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 12, Issue 5

Leading industry experts answer your strategic questions

In human resources (HR), duty of care (DoC) refers to the responsibility of employers to reasonably protect and care for their staff. It is a moral and legal concern and often incorporated into corporate governance and policies. In the UK, we are also obligated to look after employees when they travel and work abroad as prescribed by the Corporate Manslaughter and Homicide Act of 2007. With globalization showing no signs of abating, more and more employees are across borders, many times in unfamiliar or risky environments.

In 2012, we found that of the 4.6 million travelers in our TravelTracker platform, a system used by Fortune 500 and other organizations to track and communicate with their business travelers, 23 percent went to international destinations with significant medical risk. These travelers comprise the staff of 700 customers – multinational enterprises each with thousands of employees. Medical risk can come in the forms of infectious disease, underlying chronic health conditions, unsafe food and water, road accidents and a lack of decent medical infrastructure to provide emergency and routine care. In addition to health risk, security risk can also threaten travelers who find themselves victims of petty or violent crime or unknowingly caught up in riots or insurgency.

In most situations, we want to encourage employees to travel so they can accomplish our business goals wherever they are. We can do this through preventative measures and education to empower our workforce to make informed choices to protect their health and safety.

Putting a strategy in place

To roll out an effective DoC strategy, the first steps are putting the right travel risk management policies, procedures and systems in place to prevent and mitigate incidents. Comprehensive DoC governance brings together diverse stakeholders in HR, travel, security, legal, medical and communications functions to address gaps in company policy.

Companies start by looking at risk assessment – of both destinations and of travelers/expatriates. For example, not only do you need to know if a city has certain infectious diseases present but also if the employee has chronic health conditions or is a “new” or “seasoned” traveler. Implementing vaccination, health screening and medical and security pre-travel destination training programs reduce risk.

Tracking where business travelers are located and being able to communicate with them, for example, in a natural disaster or in widespread civil unrest, is critical to their safety. In an incident, the employer should have an assistance provider able to provide medical or security help to the traveler when needed. Lastly, compliance and reporting on all of the above tactics can boost continuous improvement and quality initiatives.

Engaging employees

Even with a great travel risk management program, we can go further by creating a sense of engagement with employees on pre-travel awareness. We recently ran a global education campaign to help HR directors inform employees on travel threats. Called “Spot the Risk” (www.spottherisk.com), the campaign featured a light-hearted online game that took a few minutes to play, a sample question being:

From a safety perspective, which room of a hotel should you pick?

A) Ground floor.B) Between the 2nd and 6th floors opposite side to the lobby.C) Any room on the business/executive floor.D) Top floor.Answer is B.

Game content, developed by our doctors and security specialists, featured a punchy design and graphics.

We launched Spot the Risk to thousands of HR directors through our sales teams, in email marketing, via a successful LinkedIn campaign, on our website and through social media. In the campaign, we provided our HR partners with an internal communications package that they could easily adapt and roll out at their organizations. This package included emails they could customize, posters and content for internal social media like Yammer and intranets.

DoC and Travel Risk Management continues to be a top concern in HR strategy. Whilst good governance and underlying policy are a great start, driving employee engagement is essential to put education into practice. As employees have increasing demands on their time, to break through we need to adapt techniques from our colleagues in marketing and internal communications to capture awareness and communicate successfully.

Rebecca HackworthGroup Communications Manager at International SOS, London, UK.

About the author

Rebecca Hackworth is Group Communications Manager at International SOS in London. She has spent 15 years in international corporate communications at blue chips, partnering with HR on a variety of global policy, change management and training initiatives. She worked closely with Tommy, a London-based new media agency, to develop the Spot the Risk game and launched it together with the help of the global marketing teams in 15 countries. Rebecca Hackworth can be contacted at: rebecca.hackworth@internationalsos.com