Companies have a responsibility to provide duty of care to their travelling employees – legally, ethically and from a business point of view.
To strengthen your duty of care situation and effectively support your travellers’ well-being and safety companies need to consider various internal and external factors. But finding the best team capable to develop and advance your travel risk management programme, is perhaps the most important and most challenging task for many companies.
Travel management firm Flightline has shared 4 key points helping you to build a successful team, which is capable to advance your travel risk management programme:
1. Join the right forces In-house
To get organised for your travel risk management programme, organisations need to acknowledge travel risk management is a joint effort from representatives of numerous internal department and stakeholders outside your organisation including travel, security, HR, legal, finance, medical and others.
2. Get a travel security specialist on-board
Getting outside help is vital for creating and managing a travel risk management programme. By working closely with specialist travel security solution providers and your travel management company, you get access to specialist expertise, advanced intelligence feeds and the right technology needed to fulfil your duty of care requirements while effectively managing business travel related risks.
3. Partner with a business travel management company
Business travel companies play a vital role in travel risk management by making reservations, which are the main source of information for traveller tracking systems. For example, ‘Flightline Travel Management’ works closely in partnership with travel security providers and can push destination information generated by the security provider to customers booking travel to those destinations, and help you implement the appropriate travel authorisation process.
Your dedicated business travel agency will maintain traveller profiles, which are essential for tracking your travellers’ whereabouts in case of an emergency, bring travellers home or re-arrange their trips when problems arise.
4. Equip your team with the right technology tools
No matter how good your appointed internal and outside team are, the travel risk management programme will fail if you do not have the right business travel technology tools in place.
Usually, companies have two options, either you source the relevant travel management software and tools yourself or approach a third-party provider, such as a TMC to source the right business travel technology solutions for you. Whichever route you choose, make sure you do it the right way.
The 4 points described above certainly do not represent a complete list of every action companies need to take for driving forward their travel risk management programme. However, these four points provide some ideas and perhaps some guidance for organisations striving to develop or optimise a robust travel risk management programme.
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