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Duty of care
THE REQUIREMENTS of duty of care have been clear since the introduction of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007. Companies have a duty of care to employees and that includes ensuring they are safe and looked after while travelling on business. For companies looking to implement an effective duty of care policy, there are several challenges, however. First, a company's duty of
care may apply during events as wide-ranging as severe weather phenomena (ash clouds, tsunamis, hurricanes and more) to smaller scale emergencies, such as a measles outbreak on an offshore rig that threatens to spread among those on board. Second, the duty of care obligation is normally not restricted to one person or even a single department. In fact, it is considered to be everyone’s responsibility – HR, security, risk management, occupational health and safety managers, senior management and the travel department. It cannot be relegated to just one functional group, and so a significant cost lies in planning and implementing best practices rather than the costs associated with taking care of employees. Third, the duty of care applies not only to travellers but locals, expats, international assignees and dependents.
These observations come from a global benchmarking study on duty of care undertaken by healthcare and security services company International SOS. The findings highlight the fact that there is no such thing as a ‘safe’ country. “Incidents can happen in any location, but there are ways to mitigate risk,” says International SOS group manager of marketing and communications, Rebecca Hackworth. “These can vary greatly within a country. For example, in Brazil, some areas of Rio have a greater likelihood of kidnapping, assault and robbery than others; and while in major Brazilian cities, malaria and other infectious diseases are controlled, in the rural north and west, they may be endemic.”
Other factors presenting a risk in otherwise safe countries, include vulnerability due to being unfamiliar with a new destination; fatigue when driving; flaring of chronic health conditions; lost medication; illness; opportunistic crime; and imprisonment. In addition: “Alcohol guidelines are coming up more frequently now, with customers’ preventing travellers from charging alcoholic drinks back to the business,” says senior business development manager at Click Travel, Lucie Harrison.
COMMUNICATION Experts agree one of the most effective ways to protect travellers from potential danger – and the companies they work for from liability – is good communication. This includes ongoing confirmation of travel policy and briefing of travellers before they depart, with mandatory briefings for high-risk destinations; making sure they have access to information while on the move; using traveller tracking systems; ensuring appropriate immunisation; and providing some way for employer and employee to communicate in the event of an emergency. But of course there are always
those who will act independently. “It is all very well having a policy that says not to drive after an eight-hour flight, but if it is not mandated someone could drive and have an accident,” says Keith Burgess, general counsel and central services director for HRG. “Companies need to protect employees from perceived danger and protect themselves from liability.” He says the best way to ensure
compliance is to “get buy-in from the top. People need to understand why rules are there and that they are not just petty and bureaucratic.”
REACTION TIMES Travel management companies (TMCs) are in the thick of protecting employees and employers – and this includes providing a 24-hour service, real-time security information and having the ability to react
immediately and appropriately to any emergency.
In this, they are not always helped by their clients. After the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan in March 2011, HRG was tasked with evacuating large numbers of people from Tokyo. “It became apparent with more than one of our large multinational clients that although they knew when their people travelled there and what jobs they were doing, they had no record of whether there’d been any increase in expats’ families while they were there,” says HRG’s international development director Susan Lancaster. “In some instances, HR did not know how many
Experts agree one of the most effective ways to protect travellers from potential danger is good communication
there were in the family. There was a startling lack of centralised information. It was a matter of ringing people and asking them, because we had charter flights lined up and we needed to keep a list of those going on the flight. Since then, we have seen some procedures implemented to address that.” However, sharing of personal information can be a tricky issue. “Data protection regulation has been known to cause problems,” says Julian Munsey, head of strategic business development at Hillgate Travel. “But if it’s dealt with as part of the TMC travel profile build, and the stakeholders within the company understand why the information needs to be shared, it makes life much easier for the service providers.”
TOP PRIORITY
This year has seen evidence that duty of care is becoming a focus, partly because we are increasingly aware of the world’s dangers, but also because “as
businesses seek new markets in the wake of the global economic crisis, they are sending employees not just to the BRICs [Brazil, Russia, India and China] but also to emerging markets such as the CIVETS [Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa],” says Hackworth at International SOS. “And many of these markets present greater risks to travellers.” And where companies go, consultants follow. PWC (Pricewaterhouse Coopers) categorises destinations as low, through medium and high, to critical risk. “Low is every market that is safe to travel to and in, without a prior check here,” says business travel manager Will Hasler. “If travellers are going anywhere else, they can expect a phone call from our security teams and an email from HRG, asking them whether they are leaving the city.”
MENTAL HEALTH Stress is another factor that companies must consider, although there is a limit to how much any company can baby-sit employees. “If someone chooses to work 18 hours a day, their manager or director would happily let them do that. We have a lot of very hard-working people who are on-call 24 hours a day, and it is compulsory to watch your Blackberry,” says Hasler. “It is difficult to be prescriptive about how much people can work but if they are sick or tired and do shoddy work, the reputation of the organisation suffers. We expect people to have a certain amount of self-discipline.” The firm takes a holistic view of duty of care, so during the ash cloud crisis of 2010, for example, it looked after those travelling on business and leisure. “They are still our employees and we wanted them back – duty of care does extend to that,” says Hasler.
LIABILITY AND LEGALITY Fulfilling the obligation of duty of care requires different responsibilities from different people in a company. “Higher up the organisation, the concern is liability and the legal side;
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