Matthew Judge
Duty of care has become engrained in many organisations' policies and processes for dealing with potential risks in the workplace, but this provision becomes far more complex when that workplace could literally be anywhere in the world. So how do you ensure that you're providing adequate duty of care for your business travellers and others under your care remit?
There's been much talk recently about how to deal with crisis events and provide that all-important assistance to travellers when the worst happens. It's understandable that we hear more and more travel risk experts extolling the virtues of traveller tracking and assistance solutions as a way of organisations complying with the necessary duty of care requirements for their travelling employees. But demonstrating adequate duty of care goes much further than simply being able to locate your people on a map and respond to an incident should the worst happen.
The process of providing adequate duty of care for business travellers needs to begin long before a single journey commences. Fully understanding the risks you are exposing your travellers to, assessing those risks and ensuring that the appropriate risk mitigation measures are in place are fundamental, yet often overlooked, components of a truly effective duty of care programme. So ask yourself the following:
- Do you have a clear and accurate picture of the risks and the dynamic real time threats your people may face?
- Do you have the right policies and procedures in place to contextualise, understand and treat these risks?
- Are the policies and procedures engrained across the whole organisation? Are they documented, understood and complied with?
- Before a trip is even booked, is a comprehensive risk assessment carried out and are adequate control measures in place?
- Are your travellers provided with the necessary briefings and training to prepare them for all possible eventualities, before they actually travel?
By focusing on the reactive rather than the proactive, not only are you potentially putting your personnel at risk but your organisation could also find itself facing legal ramifications. As case law highlights (Dusek vs StormHarbour Securities LLP and Dennis vs Norwegian Refugee Council, to name but two) employers can be deemed to have breached their duty of care by failing to do everything that was reasonable in the circumstances to keep their employees safe from harm.
The onus is very much on organisations to demonstrate that they have sufficient policies and procedures in place to minimise the risks that those under their care may face - fall short on these and you could be falling a long way short of fulfilling your own fundamental duty of care requirements.
- Matthew Judge is group managing director at The Anvil Group