Duty of care is the moral and legal obligation of employers to safeguard their employees, contractors and anyone else in their care from harm while travelling on their behalf, using their services or participating in their activities.
As regular business travellers, your employees need assurance of your support and assistance if there’s a problem while they’re abroad, no matter when or where it occurs. When they feel safe on their travels, they’ll be more relaxed, increasing their productivity. This in turn improves staff retention and will streamline the travel experience for all concerned.
The best way to ensure your travellers have a successful trip is to prepare them in advance. This works twofold: with preparation the traveller feels reassurance, while you can relax in the knowledge that your employees understand how to respond should a problem arise. Furthermore, with careful planning, you’ll always know where your travellers will be at any point in time, so you can easily locate them in the event of an emergency.
How to prepare your staff
To avoid any potential issues, your staff should be briefed on your safety procedures pre, during and post-travel.
Pre-travel
Ensure that your staff are familiar with your travel policy, your health and safety policy, and the risk assessment for their trip, which should identify any risks or hazards. This should include any health and fitness aspects that may impact their travels, as well as visa and vaccination advice. Make sure you provide your travellers with emergency contact numbers for both your travel insurance provider and for your emergency contact. Ensure your staff’s traveller profiles are upto-date, including their next-of-kin information, and let them know any standard procedures they will need to follow, such as sending a text or email when they arrive at their destination.
During travel
You need to ensure that in the event of something not going to plan, your travellers know where to turn. Our expert Travel Managers are able to locate your travellers at the touch of a button, and are here to support you and your travellers during their trip. Traveller tracking technology via GPS can assist with locating your travellers when they are at risk, giving extra peace of mind to both you and your travellers. At Corporate Traveller, Savi online booking tool offers a forward trip monitor to identify any future bookings which might be affected.
Post travel
It’s a good idea to survey your travellers after their journey, ensuring they understood the safety procedures and get their feedback on any improvements that could be made.
Are you taking advantage of Corporate Travellers latest tech and travel tools to keep your travellers safe?
Through our experience of working with thousands of clients and travellers we can guide you on the delivery of your duty of care program, help you analyse the risk of your business destinations and work with you to create a plan for your travellers – for pre, during and post travel. For example, we can help you to:
Pre-travel
- Keep control of your staff bookings, identifying high risk or out of policy bookings.
- Set up travel alerts, keeping you and your travellers informed of potential disruptions.
- Maintain your traveller profiles, including the most up-to-date emergency contact information for your traveller.
In addition to these pre-travel requirements, Corporate Traveller’s online booking tool Savi enables customers to:
- See at a glance which hotels have implemented new health and hygiene measures to ensure traveller wellbeing throughout their stay, through its Savi Clean Hotels indicator.
- See up-to-date airline policies for COVID-19 at the time of booking. This includes health and safety measures such as health screening, food and beverage hygiene, passenger and crew wellbeing, airport and cabin cleaning as well as flexible booking conditions.
During travel
- Give travellers 24/7 in-house support for emergencies or last-minute itinerary changes.
- Provide traveller tracking reporting to pinpoint any travellers at risk.
- Implement crisis response plans to contact and locate your traveller in the event of an emergency.
Post travel
- Identify out of policy bookings and risky destinations through regular reporting, helping you to tighten up your travel policy compliance where necessary.
And while travelling during a pandemic may mean having to cancel a trip due to a border closure, Corporate Traveller can help manage the cancellation, and importantly what you do with the credit. Savi enables customers to have visibility of unused ticket credits through:
- A smart dashboard widget which gives travel bookers and travellers clear transparency over their next to expire ticket credits.
- A ticket management facility allowing users to see their full credit pools available for reservations.
- A clearly defined booking process that allows the utilisation of unused ticket exchanges for self bookers and across Cost Centres and Departments for Travel Bookers.
Grow Back Safer
Partner with Corporate Traveller and be confident in your Travel Program, knowing that it covers your Duty of Care responsibilities. Plus access travel tech solutions and be supported by experts with their finger on the pulse of travel around the world.