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personally speaking I wouldn’t see this as an intrusion of my private space. However, in domestic travel and low risk travel


areas I am not sure it is deemed entirely necessary. Yes, it is important that the office or your travel management company can get hold of you in an emergency or warn you of a potential dangerous situation or disturbance, and in this case a mobile phone number and email address would suffice, along with a good reporting system to show traveller locations. In these situations I am confident that our travel safety and risk management policy are robust enough to manage should an emergency arise.


THE TMC SIMON MCLEAN


Most tracking systems available on the market today track the expected location of your staff based on their booked travel itineraries. However, new technologies – in particular the rise


of smartphone apps – give way to the possibility of continuously tracking an individual’s precise location based on the location of a device (such as their smartphone or tablet) that they carry with them every day. It’s still not foolproof – we’ve all left our phones


at home! – but it’s leagues ahead of tracking itineraries. But this level of detail presents a catch 22 situation between the privacy of your staff and your responsibility as an organisation to look after their welfare when they're away from the office. While many travellers visiting high risk


destinations welcome having their movements tracked in favour of maintaining their personal safety, some business travellers consider this a step too far. There is also an interesting debate about whether


tracking should be on an individual opt-in basis: if a member of staff chooses to opt-out of being tracked on their travels, does that negate the organisation’s duty of care? One solution is to have a ‘Chinese wall’ between


location data and the organisation. End user devices should broadcast their location back to the service provider, and the organisation should be able to broadcast a communication to anyone in a certain location. However, employers should not be able to see who is in that location unless the end user has given explicit permission to be visible. Using this methodology, systems can satisfy both


the privacy concerns of the end user and the duty of care responsibility of the organisation. An alternative approach is to use a Facebook-


style ’check-in’ feature that allows end users to publish their current location as and when they want to, along with the ability to trigger an alert if they are involved in a crisis which will send their GPS coordinates to a predefined list of contacts. I have six suggestions for travel buyers on this issue:


• Be honest and upfront about tracking software. Inform staff exactly what it can do, what it can’t do and what its purpose is.


• Have a clear internal policy that specifically addresses the use of traveller tracking within your organisation. Ensure that anyone who is likely to be tracked has confirmed they have read and agreed with your use of traveller tracking. • Build your traveller tracking policy into your travel programme with either a checkbox that the user needs to tick to confirm acceptance, or a tracking statement in your confirmation email template. • Consider whether acceptance of your traveller tracking policy should be a requirement to travel on business. • Ensure that access to the tracking system is limited to only key personnel – most probably members of your internal crisis team. Have a clear policy on when the tracking system can be used and the purposes for which it can be used. Abuse of the traveller tracking system should be considered gross misconduct. • When the tracking system is used to good effect, publish the story on your company intranet or newsletter to demonstrate the benefits of the system to your staff.


“Be honest and upfront about tracking software. Inform staff exactly what it can do, what it can’t do, and what its purpose is”


THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE 23


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