Six Major Findings and Analysis
Below are specific risk patterns based upon company HQ locations:
Australia/Oceania perceive the risk of kidnapping, hijacking and piracy to be significantly lower, because these places are generally considered safe.
Asia perceives the risk of natural disasters (such as earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis and even ash clouds) to be higher than companies headquartered in Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, since these disasters occur frequently in the Asian region. They also rate the risk of pandemics and lack of air quality higher than European, North American and Australian-headquartered companies.
Europe and North America are more concerned about remoteness and rural isolation, which may also be related to the nature of some of their industries—extraction, construction and NGOs.
Respondent Demographics
1. Level of respondent—In general, the risk and security as well as QHS&E respondents rate the risks of various threats higher than middle management and contributors, but the differences are not statistically significant. Contributors usually deal firsthand with the issues of theft of intellectual property (piracy) when working abroad and, therefore, they perceive the risk of piracy higher than senior management does.
2. Function of respondent—In general, the risk and security as well as QHS&E respondents rate security- and medical-related threats to be a higher risk than any other functional group. HR, general management, and the combined group of “other” functions, generally have lower risk perceptions of all threats to employees. The 11 of 37 threats6
demonstrates significant
differences statistically by the functional role of the respondent. Those who are informed because of their functional expertise (Risk Management, Security, QHS&E and Medical) rate the risks that they manage highest, which explains the higher risk rating that they attribute to those types of threats.
The overall lower risk perception of HR and general management is more difficult to explain. Duty of Care simply may not be on their radar screen because it is not their core job responsibility. Although they are likely to be the first line of contact for an employee experiencing a threat, they are also more likely to refer the problem to the specialists in their organizations. That may result in their lower perceptions of owning the problem and risk (i.e., “It is not my core responsibility. If something happens, my role in the problem is short-term, and then I send in the experts”).
6
Terrorism, kidnapping, lawlessness, violent and opportunistic crimes, hurricanes/typhoons/tsunamis, work accidents, lack of air quality, remoteness of work location, language and cultural estrangement, and road accidents.
19
General management and QHS&E perceive the risk of road accidents to be a higher risk to employees than HR, Risk Management and Security. This is probably because road accidents happen with employees that they manage and know personally. General management also rates the risk of lack of administrative compliance to be higher—a problem that they must solve because, if left unsolved, it may become a major barrier in fulfilling their management job responsibilities.
3. Respondent location—The general trend is that respondents from the Sub-Saharan region perceive the risk of threats to be higher. Meanwhile, Australian respondents generally identify the threats to be lower than respondents from other regions. Twenty- two threats show significant differences by region of the respondent. Asian respondents perceive the threats related to illness and infectious diseases, political unrest, violence and crime to be significantly lower than respondents from Sub- Saharan Africa, Europe and North America. Lower rating of risks related to political unrest, violence and crime by Asian respondents may be explained by the nature of their political regimes, which are generally more controlled and stable. However, Asian respondents rate travel-related infections significantly higher than Australian, European and North American respondents—possibly because they consider themselves vulnerable when dealing with them.
Threats related to natural disasters are perceived to be significantly lower by respondents from the Sub-Saharan region compared to other respondents, likely due to the low incidence of natural disasters in their region.
Road accidents represent a major problem for expatriates in the Sub-Saharan Africa due to poor road conditions and erratic driving. Yet, respondents from this region do not consider road accidents to be a risk, as they consider dangerous driving the norm.
Finally, North American respondents rate the risk of lack of administrative and legal compliance significantly lower than European respondents because they have greater respect for the rule of law, and are more compliant with existing laws and regulations (more universalistic). Meanwhile, Europeans may be more “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” oriented (more particularistic).
In summary, geography (HQ and respondent) and sector/industry affect the perception of risk to employees more than the size of the company and the level of the respondent. Respondents and companies are more aware of greater risks of threats once they have experienced them. But, cultural frameworks and company resources may mitigate the perception of certain risks without any realistic connection to the actual risk of occurrence. As with perceptions, the risk of these various threats remains, to a large extent, in the eye of the beholder.
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