Six ways to keep your staff safe while travelling abroad
When sending your staff overseas for business travel the priority needs to be their safety and wellbeing. But do you have the right resources and risk management in place to keep your travellers safe, evacuate when necessary and mitigate risk?
Here are six ways to keep your staff safe while travelling abroad for business.
- Have a detailed itinerary readily available
As an employer, you need to know where your employees are at all times. Keep a copy of their itinerary including their accommodation, transportation details, conference and meeting information and travel route so you can be prepared to help your employee should they require any changes or assistance.
- Plan ahead for emergencies and incidents
While you can’t predict unforeseen incidents like emergencies, disasters, accidents, health events or theft you can plan how you will manage them in advance.
Your travel procedures and protocols should be outlined in a well-documented and well-communicated travel policy that all of your corporate travellers have easy access to. All staff should also be well trained in what to do in the case of an emergency both domestically and internationally.
You might also like to provide a travel pack for the country they are visiting that includes key contact details like the numbers for local emergency services, your travel insurance provider, the locations of public transport and the contact details for the Australian embassy should they need it.
- Have important information ready in the local language
If your corporate travellers are going to a non-English speaking country, it’s a good idea to have common phrases, the addresses of where they are going and staying and any health issues or allergies they have written down in the local language.
This can be incredibly helpful should they need to catch a taxi or request the help of non-English speaking locals.
- Make copies of important documentation
Emergencies and disasters aren’t the only situations that impact the safety and security of your travelling employees. The loss or theft of important documents like tickets, passports, wallets, phones and scripts can also pose a significant safety risk to travellers.
To ensure your corporate travellers are well protected encourage them to make a copy of all travel and medical documentation and have it readily available to them in the cloud or a place that can be easily accessed by a family member, friend or co-worker as an added safety measure.
- Be mindful of culture and customs
Each country has it’s own cultural sensitivities and traditions that corporate travellers need to be mindful of both inside and outside of the boardroom.
From maintaining eye contact to dress standards, it is important to ensure your employees are aware of the culture sensitivities in their destination country. Simple actions that may seem harmless here can attract serious and unwanted attention in other cultures.
- Don’t neglect the little details
Often it is the little details that can be forgotten in a rush to organise last minute business travel. Make sure you don’t skip important and simple checks like making sure your employee’s driver’s license is up to date. Or those extra safety precautions like only booking travellers into hotels with card security keys and having their rooms between the 3rd and 7th floor to eliminate the risk of thieving on lower levels and being out of reach in case of fire on higher levels.
As you can see significant planning and monitoring needs to be put in place to ensure the safety and security of your travellers while travelling overseas for business. If you want to find out how you can protect your staff, reduce the headaches and minimise your travel risk call us today on 1800 720 672.