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What duty of care do employers have for employees travelling for business? asks Chris Job, Director of Risk Management at Healix International, which offers business travel medical and security emergency services.
Despite corporate executives like Bill Gates predicting that business travel would die out, business travel has bounced back in full force and is quickly regaining its pre-pandemic levels. However, businesses that have resumed their corporate travel following the pandemic have returned to a dramatically different travel risk landscape than the one they left behind.
Not only are there the health risks associated with travel, which now must consider pandemic-related constraints but also rising geopolitical tensions such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, growing tensions between China and Taiwan and more recently at a localised level the fighting in Sudan. Additionally, with the climate change crisis worsening at an alarming rate, natural disasters that were previously ‘once in a century’ events are now occurring yearly, posing additional risks for business travellers. Employees face increasing security risks when travelling abroad than before.
Returning to corporate travel means contending with new or larger risks which shifts the paradigm in terms of the ‘duty of care’ that employers owe towards travelling staff. Employers need to en-sure that any existing risk management policies are updated to account for all manner of new fac-tors that have cropped up since the pandemic as well as the ever-evolving global risk outlook and its implications for specific regions.
Meet the baseline
To achieve the baseline ‘duty of care’, businesses should familiarise themselves with ISO 31030, the world’s first ‘best practice’ benchmark for travel risk management, introduced in September 2021. Employers must be able to demonstrate compliance with ISO 31030; if they are unable to do so and an employee makes a ‘duty of care’ claim, investigators and regulators could rule against them and mete out significant penalties. In light of this, it is surprising that over two-fifths of people responsible for this area of business know very little about the new standard, which provides end-to-end guidance encompassing pre, during and post-travel activity. The starting place for all businesses is to ensure they have a strong grasp of its comprehensive, in-depth guidance, which spans many areas affecting business travel.
With a thorough understanding of ISO 31030 [‘Travel risk management — Guidance for organizations’], the next step is for employers to check their existing base standard for travel activity against ISO 31030 to identify and plug the gaps in their travel risk management policies. Once they have upgraded their policy in line with the ISO standard, employers should educate their business travellers about the standard and demonstrate what they have done to align their travel risk policies with this codified duty of care. This will go a long way in helping employees feel fully aware of the risks they are likely to face on their corporate travels while also reassuring them that adequate measures are in place to shield them from any harm throughout the business trip.
Assess and monitor evolving health and security risks
Employers are also duty-bound to fully inform their business travellers of the potential medical and security risks involved in a corporate trip abroad before they embark on these travels. They need to produce or outsource travel risk assessments which accurately evaluate the potential health and security risks of travelling to specific destinations. The data gathered from travel risk assessments can also be used to develop and refine businesses’ travel risk management strategies. For instance, employers should consider enabling access to capable global international medical assistance and providing broader insurance coverage for employees travelling to regions with a higher risk of contracting an infectious disease such as malaria, hepatitis or tuberculosis.
Considering evolving geopolitical tensions, businesses also need to ensure they are constantly up to date on the changing security risks involved in travelling to or operating within certain international destinations and volatile regions. By commissioning external suppliers or embedded analysts to collate relevant, up-to-date intelligence on new and evolving risks while also tracking long-term trends, employers with limited in-house resources can keep abreast of the latest developments affecting travel which they can then relay to their employees.
Besides this, to satisfy their ‘duty of care’ concerning security risks, businesses need to proactively institute measures to mitigate these security risks while also being poised to take appropriate ac-tions to protect their employees as and when required. This involves devising comprehensive plans for evacuation and emergency responses which consider staff exposure, infrastructure, routes, ports of departure, operational issues as well as the escalation points or ‘triggers’ that herald a de-terioration in the specific environment.
By running risk assessments and collecting up-to-date information, employers can proactively fulfil their ‘duty of care’ towards corporate travellers. This can be showcased to their employees by giving them access to all these resources and findings ahead of time, and cross-referencing the crisis management plans, healthcare and insurance provisions, and emergency response strategies that are in place to manage and mitigate the risks.
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