Last Updated on: March 7, 2023 at 9:24 am
As much as there’s a bounce back on corporate travels, the risks associated with these trips are something that organisations should pay attention to. They must consider health, safety, security, natural disasters, and entry requirements when planning their business trip.
These risks are things that bother employees whenever they are to go on business trips on behalf of their organization. As a business owner, you should know how your employees want to be taken care of, especially, in terms of their safety. Knowing this would help you assure them of protection better and make them focus well at work, knowing they are safe. With this, the organisation is expected to plan ahead of those risks through a duty of care.
In this article, we'll take a look at:
The term “Duty of Care” refers to a company’s ethical and legal commitment bound by law to protect its employees and contractors both physically and emotionally. This is in effect as long as the said employees are under the business premises, engaging in company-related activities such as business travel. With the duty of care, your organisation is to ensure that your employees are protected despite anything they might have to go through.
But oftentimes, the lines blur when the duty of care obligations are brought to the event of business trips. Leaving the business traveller confused as to what would be the scope of the company. And the travel managers are dazed about what is expected of them.
For further guidance, here is some duty of care expectations that employees have for their companies during business trips:
Be well-informed before locking in the booking. They expect you to know and ensure safety from the hotel they’ll check in to including its environs. This could get tedious and draining because you have to do background checks and thorough research. Your employees would expect you to know about:
Brittany Mendez, the travel expert and CMO of Florida Panhandle, said. “My company should keep me at a safe hotel where I don’t have to worry about any run-ins with dangerous people. This means safe neighbourhoods or neighbourhoods where there is less crime rate”.
Doing this all by yourself as an HR manager is challenging since. More importantly, you have to keep track of your employee’s welfare as the trip goes on, which you have to do remotely. At Trutrip, we have a travel management solution called, Trucare feature that helps travel managers handle their duty of care responsibility to their employees. We partnered with Riskline to bring up-to-the-minute risk data and alerts into our platform.
These alerts contain a comprehensive overview of current or future travel risks that the employees might face. After reviewing it, it is sent to the dashboard of the travel managers on our platform. This helps you to be proactive and protect your employees just in case they experience any risks that You foresaw.
This is entirely associated with the first point, you owe your employees travel insurance wherever they go on a business trip. The insurance readily covers all the mishaps or the risks they might experience while on the trip. The travel insurance covers their health, life, and other things that would be necessary.
Caitlyn Parish, the founder and CEO of Cicinia, said, “I expect my company to provide me with comprehensive travel insurance that will cover any medical or legal expenses that I may incur while on my trip.”
So rather than having to run helter-skelter when a crisis occurs, travel insurance would ensure protection over lives, health, and belonging.
Another preventive measure for travel risk is monitoring your employees during business trips. You should be able to know where your employees are at a particular point in time during the trip. Your responsibility over them doesn’t end at seeing them off to the airport or train station. There is a need to keep tabs on them, which is possible with riskline on your Trucare feature. On Riskline, you’ll get real-time information about your employee’s location and risk levels.
There are times that it isn’t enough to say to employees that they are a priority; it is essential to show it in actions and decision-making as a business owner or travel manager. They should see that you take their opinions and decisions as necessary too. Your employees should see this quality in your willingness to yield to whatever they want while preparing for the business trip or even while on the business trip.
This would make them more focused on business matters that you sent them to do. Caitlyn Parish, the founder and CEO of Cicinia, said, “Your company should also be willing to work with you to accommodate any special needs or requests you may have related to your travel. For example, if you’re not comfortable staying in a hotel room alone, your company should be willing to book a room with another female traveller or arrange for someone to stay with you”.
Regardless of the things you have out in place, you have to bend to their willingness for a last-minute change of plans to show that you really take them as a priority.
This is an essential part that no business owner or HR manager should overlook. Sometimes employees face challenges during business trips but decide not to say when they return because they could find their way around it. So it would help if you asked for a review about the journey to know what they think about it and their struggles. Without doing this, you’ll deny them the physical and emotional support they need during any business trip.
Nina Nguyen, a sex educator and Co-founder of Fraulila.de, said I have talked about this with my managers, and they have made some changes that I think all women should be able to expect. For example, they take the time to check that hotels are “female friendly” – I know Maiden Voyage has listed these kinds of hotels, but other sites list this. Even ensuring that rooms are restricted to guests only, and on-site parking is essential, too”. Being a feminist, she understands that some hotels aren’t female-friendly, and such will Rob female employees of the comfort they deserve during the trip.
Another means of support they expect is a reliable 24/7 support platform that they can reach anytime. You have to support them so that they can access it at any point in time whenever they need it, and such a support platform must be able to respond speedily. Trutrip has a 24/7 support platform that will come through for your employees whenever they need to get something done. They can access this support through intelligent embedded forms, on-site messaging, WhatsApp, Facebook, Email, or phone. We are available wherever they are and whenever they need us.
Your employees are your priority. With Trutrip, we can guarantee that Without automated and integrated features, your duty of care to your employees is achieved, leaving you and your employees happy. Book a Demo or Sign up for a free trial on Trutrip.
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