Kevin Iwamoto: Duty of care visibility must cover meetings & events

With the recent terrorist events that tragically ended with massive loss of human life in Paris, Mali and San Bernardino, California, it is painfully clear that these types of terrorist attacks and public targeting can happen anywhere in the world.

As the world deals with these traumas the demand for business travel, meetings, events and congresses has already exceeded global pre-recession levels. The ultimate responsibility for attendee safety and security belongs to the companies that employ and deploy these attendees and road warriors all over the world to generate corporate revenues and awareness.

Having said that, the pressures on the meeting managers, planners, travel managers, safety and security, human resource departments and their respective interdependency on each other has never been more critical. It's important to pro-actively mitigate risks before the corporate traveller and event attendees leave their homes as well as during and after the event.

Applying travel risk to meetings

Most corporate travel departments have already established emergency protocols and procedures with third party travel management supplier partners, third party security firms, internal security department, human resources and other relevant groups. But what is disappointing to me is that I do not see similar lessons learned and best practices being actively deployed with regards to meeting, event and congress attendees.

I am constantly disappointed to find out that corporate meetings and events activities, largely due to the decentralised organisational structure for most companies, have inconsistent, if any, safety and security procedures, protocols and interdependencies on other departments and preferred suppliers. I am always pointing out this duty of care gap to prospective and existing clients - you need to make it priority to close this gap for your company.

Consider that the majority of the meetings and events your company does are probably conducted locally, which means no travel booking was made with your preferred travel management company. If something does go wrong, how will your company identify and assist any employees at risk?

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Women were attacked outside Cologne's train station on New Year's Eve. If your travellers were there for an event, would you have known? ©Heiko Kuverling/iStock

If you are depending on the existing corporate travel emergency process to kick in and assist, it is not going to happen because that protocol is triggered to only focus on travellers and attendees who booked travel. The best practice recommendation to mitigate this gap is to mandate registration of all meetings and events so your security department can identify and assist your off-campus staff should something catastrophic arise.

'When' not 'if'

Whenever I speak with security professionals, their message is always real time. They don't hypothesise about "if" something were to happen; they speak in the current tense referring to potential security disruptions as "when". I highly recommend and advocate that travel, meeting and event professionals start incorporating some pro-active measures to at least plan for emergencies.

Here are some high level safety and security considerations that every organisation should be doing on a consistent and regular basis.

1. Maintain communications between all stakeholders throughout all stages of the event lifecycle; pre, during and post.
2. Do a risk assessment for destinations and venues being considered and sourced no matter how safe you feel the destination or venue is. This is a must. Document this process in case something tragic occurs; at least you have documentation that safety and security considerations were vetted in advance.
   It is best practice to always ask for the venue's emergency and guest safety and security outline during the RFP process so you can evaluate it with your security department. But you cannot and should not solely depend on their emergency security plans; you have to also augment it with your own. Create a risk assessment for these specific components of the event.
   
   • Pre-planning
   • On-site
   • General facility considerations
   • Public space considerations
   • Guest room and meeting space considerations
3. Work with internal and external security departments and suppliers — all parties and stakeholders need to be in perfect alignment in order to truly mitigate any situation that may occur pre-, during or post-event.
   Best practice is to speak to meeting and event planners to discuss which companies you are currently using for security assessments, assistance, notifications, etc. The events team can work with that preferred supplier to create a similar emergency plan and risk assessment process for your meeting and events programme and company attendees.
4. Using social media to get assistance or information about destinations and venues that may be risky has proven invaluable for security and safety of attendees.
   However, there's a dark side of social media that is generally ignored: travellers or attendees posting information about their physical whereabouts, travel itineraries or where company or event locations is etc. Social media is open to all so if the bad guys want to target your company or an event, all the information innocently posted by travellers and attendees suddenly become open invitations. Social media corporate communication guidelines need to be enforced, period.
5. Create an emergency contact protocol and distribute this information to all attendees. Do not make the mistake of making this too complex with too much to remember. You must also consider the panicked state of mind of any impacted traveller or attendee- they are not going to be willing to speak out loud on their phone if they are hiding under a restaurant table trying to avoid being in the line of fire or getting attention from a terrorist with a weapon. And that's assuming mobile communication channels are even open and available.
6. Use meeting/event technology registration functionality for all meetings and events. It is the best way to get attendee information and contact details so your security group can assist all employees who may be caught being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Internally this also gives you, as well as your security group, more visibility of employee whereabouts so you can pro-actively take measures and change locations and venues if an unexpected security alert is issued.

Pre-planning questions to ask

In the December issue of Special Events Magazine, well-known security consultant Gary Moses, who has worked on security for major events like the Academy Awards, shared a great checklist for asking the right questions during the pre-planning phase.

1. Could the event be affected by the action of individuals?
2. Could a chemical or biohazard occur?
3. What is the subject of the event: political, religious, entertainment or corporate?
4. Is the event high- or low-profile?
5. Are the speakers coming in public or government officials?
6. Could someone disrupt the event to gain media exposure?
7. Has the venue been used for this event before?
8. Can the venue secure the airflow system?
9. Will all guests be credentialed?
10. Has a security professional reviewed the event plans and the venue?

The bottom line is that none of us can accurately predict where an emergency crisis will occur since that is beyond our individual control.

What we can commit to is doing a better and more comprehensive job of consistently putting traveller and attendee safety and security first before commencing event sourcing and organisational logistics.

Start off 2016 the right way by being more aware and consistent in executing duty of care for your fellow workers.