The seemingly increasing number of incidents (weather, terrorism, political) happening all over the world have brought corporate travel duty of care into the spotlight in the last several years. Companies are now asking themselves if they have a legal and/or moral obligation to their employees traveling on behalf of the business, and if so, where that obligation starts and stops.
For companies working on answering those questions, they’re finding out that there is quite a bit of gray area to navigate. Outside of the United Kingdom, where the Corporate Manslaughter & Corporate Homicide Act 2007 defines corporate travel duty of care obligations, there aren’t such explicit laws that companies can refer to when deciding on what level of duty of care is appropriate for their company. Therefore, it makes sense for companies to think about the nature of their travel and the destinations they commonly travel to in order to put duty of care policies into effect that make sense to their unique situation. However, most companies share some commonalities with regard to basic duty of care and that’s a good place to start when constructing a duty of care plan.
Pre-trip advisories, traveler location map, incident alerts, and emergency communication platforms are a great start for companies that want to make sure they have a solid foundation for their duty of care plan. Think about it. Notifying your travelers if they’ve booked travel to a dangerous location, seeing where your travelers are at while on the road, notifying your travel risk manager and travelers if an incident occurs around them, and providing them with a way to communicate to their company and spouse/partner/friends in an emergency is a great place to start. From there, companies can think about emergency evacuation services, overseas medical assistance, armed security, etc., if they have unique travel requiring extra duty of care measures.
The good news is that companies don’t have to try to piece together this basic duty of care travel risk management technology. For example, Travel Leaders / Destinations Unlimited utilizes CARE for its clients. CARE provides all of the basic travel risk management needs mentioned above with the option to add additional services. For information on how to get your duty of care basics covered, contact us.