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As companies find increasing options to bring guest travelers into their managed travel programs, questions persist about their precise responsibility for those travelers’ safety and security.
Guest travel, be it by non-profiled employees or such nonemployees as contractors or job applicants, typically makes up between 7 percent and 15 percent of a company’s overall travel spending, Serko SVP of sales Mike Daly said in a recent BTN webinar on guest travel management. While duty of care to traveling employees is clearly defined from a legal standpoint, what about nonemployees?
With contractors, such responsibilities usually are explicitly outlined in contracts, said Henning Snyman, Americas security director for travel risk management firm International SOS.
“If you contract someone in, it will stipulate if they should have their own insurance in place or rely on their own insurance companies,” he said. “In most cases, it is the norm that organizations do extend duty of care to contractors as well.”
For nonemployees not covered by contracts, it’s a bit murkier. ISO 31030 guidelines, for example, cover a company’s ability to communicate and track “travelers,” which could extend to anyone traveling on behalf of the company, such as an invited guest speaker or temporary staff, Snyman said. Still, it’s a bit of a “legal gray area,” he said.
Erring on the side of caution is prudent from the legal standpoint, of course.
“Liability is an interesting concept,” said Julie Deppe, director of product management for risk management firm Everbridge. “Much of it is set by precedent when something happens and potentially how people react to that.”
Legality or Morality?
Beyond the legal question, of course, is a moral question, which duty-of-care providers said is less ambiguous.
“Our feeling is that an organization, whether it’s a large, privately held company, a government agency, a university, a school or a hospital, it’s the wider stakeholder network that should be provided safety awareness,” said Michael Becker, CEO of risk assessment tech provider GeoSure.
Both travel managers in BTN’s webinar, Meta travel technology manager Shane Earley and GE travel project and purchasing card leader Dave Schaber, said that is their approach. Earley said Meta shares information with ISOS and its internal security team whether a traveler is an employee or not, and Schaber said third-party travelers are included in GE duty-of-care programs as well.
“I can’t speak to the legality of it, but we feel it’s the best approach for us,” Schaber said. “We’re treating them as employees as far as duty of care goes.”
I’ve had companies tell me that they prefer not to have us get involved with those guest travelers, that they want a different mechanism to deal with that. I think that’s short-sighted.”
– BCD Travel’s Kathy Bedell
Even so, it’s certainly not the universal approach.
“I’ve had companies tell me that they prefer not to have us get involved with those guest travelers, that they want a different mechanism to deal with that,” BCD Travel SVP Kathy Bedell said. “I think that’s short-sighted. You have contracted them for something, so you have an agreement with that individual.”
Even in cases where contracts stipulate that contractors are responsible for their own insurance, that contractor might be relying on basic travel insurance, which ticks the requirement box, Snyman said. However, perhaps they didn’t disclose to that insurance provider that they would be on a remote site that is beyond their contractual coverage. Would a company then simply walk away if a situation arises?
“The reputational risk could be massive,” Snyman said.
That might become clearer when actual emergencies arrive. In some evacuations that ISOS have handled over the past few years, 60 percent to 70 percent of evacuees have been people who were not employees of the organization doing the evacuation, according to Snyman.
“The responsibility they took on was based on moral and ethical principles, not a legal requirement,” he said.
Clear Communication Key
In many cases, extending protection to guest travelers is not a matter of changing relationships with existing suppliers. ISOS, for example, makes no distinction between employees and nonemployees when it considers to whom it is providing information under a covered company, Snyman said. Similarly, GeoSure’s information is not exclusively only to employees of client companies, Becker said. The strategy, then, becomes more of a communication question.
ISOS, for example, pushes out alerts to travelers who are signed up for email alerts, its app or via its traveler-tracking system. Those who are not permanent travelers for a company might not be signed up for those alerts or be part of that information flow, so a company needs to have a strategy to ensure they can get that information and know how to reach out for assistance. Actually getting the assistance is a bit easier, as ISOS works from a point of “assist first and ask questions later,” Snyman said.
If a company has its own app for travelers, then extending access to that app for guest travelers can be fairly simple, Becker said. If they don’t have their own app, GeoSure can white-label a mobile tool they can use with any broader constituency base, he said.
Everbridge has the capability to create contacts when it receives travel reservations if they do not match an existing contact in order to support guest travelers, Deppe said.
“If you are a contractor coming in or a recruit coming in for an interview, we’ll create a temporary contact in our system and then automatically delete you if you haven’t been changed into a permanent contact 90 days post-travel,” she said. “It’s really important to us that, no matter what, no travelers are left behind.”
Several travel management companies in recent years also have added solutions for guest travelers, which brings them into a program and makes servicing those travelers in emergencies easier as well. Among those that have added such solutions in recent years are Fox World Travel, Egencia, Adelman Travel, AmTrav and BCD.
Some of it, however, just boils down to having a policy down on paper so a company can be clear about its responsibilities and limitations, Snyman said. Bedell said some industries in particular are leading the way around setting policies around guest travel—particularly media and entertainment, which deals with frequent high-touch guest travelers such as models or actors coming in to do shoots.
“There are a lot of things happening in our industry,” Bedell said. “It’s ever-changing, but it’s also an opportunity, so we need to lead.”
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