Based on an article by Auguste Faerch, Safeture
Picture this: It’s 8 p.m. in Lagos and your Regional Operations Manager is on their way back from a critical site visit. A peaceful protest has just turned violent, blocking main roads, and their driver can’t reach them. At the same time, their connecting flight home is cancelled due to airspace restrictions. They need a safe extraction, secure accommodation, and their family reassured — all before the situation escalates further. This is when a dependable Travel Risk Management plan makes the difference between disruption and disaster.
If you’re a Head of Safety, HR Manager or Travel Risk Coordinator, situations like this can keep you up at night, and they’re exactly why a solid duty of care programme matters. In this article, you’ll learn what duty of care in travel really means, why it’s vital for your mobile workforce, and the practical steps you can take to keep every traveller safe.
For a deeper dive into the legal obligations and best practices of travel risk management and duty of care, have a look at our Comprehensive Guide to Duty of Care.
What Is Duty of Care in Travel?
Duty of care is the ethical and legal obligation of an organisation to take reasonable steps to protect the health, safety, and well-being of its employees, customers, and other stakeholders. In the context of travel risk management, duty of care involves identifying potential risks and hazards associated with travel and taking steps to mitigate or eliminate those risks. For an example, see the UK government’s set of guidelines on duty of care obligations for its travelling citizens.
Travel risk management is an essential part of any organisation’s overall risk management strategy. It focuses on safeguarding travellers by preparing for health and safety threats such as infectious diseases, natural disasters, and political instability, and taking steps to protect employees, and ensuring appropriate measures are in place to keep people safe.
Why Duty of Care Matters for Travelling Employees
Beyond the immediate need for personal safety, security and the right to safe working conditions for employees, duty of care carries a lot of weight. The following aspects add to the peace of mind and confidence instilled by a quality TRM framework.
- Legal liability. Failure to protect staff can trigger lawsuits, fines and even corporate‑manslaughter charges in some jurisdictions. Demonstrating robust travel risk management (TRM) not only limits exposure but also satisfies insurers and auditors that you meet ISO 31030 and other international standards.
- Talent retention. Employees who feel looked after are more willing to accept overseas assignments, deliver peak performance and stay with the company longer. A visible duty of care culture boosts morale and positions your organisation as an employer of choice in competitive markets.
- Business continuity. A single incident, such as a lost passport, medical emergency or civil unrest, can derail projects, trigger contract penalties and damage brand reputation. Proactive TRM safeguards budgets and keeps mission‑critical operations running, even when disruptions strike.
5 Business Travel Safety Tips for Employers
1. Develop a comprehensive travel risk management plan.
Organisations should develop a comprehensive travel risk management plan that includes identifying potential risks, implementing measures to mitigate those risks, and regularly reviewing and updating the plan.
A written plan underpins your entire duty of care framework. Map out every step, from pre‑trip country risk assessments to post‑trip debriefs, so nothing is left to chance.
2. Communicate with travellers early and often.
Organisations should communicate with employees about potential travel risks and provide them with information and resources to help them stay safe. This can include providing employees with travel advisories, emergency contact information, and access to medical support services. Also make sure they are informed about vaccination requirements, developing situations and of course, detailed TRM plans.
3. Provide targeted training.
Organisations should provide employees with the skills to identify potential travel risks and respond effectively in emergency situations. This can include travel safety training on how to avoid potential health hazards, such as infectious diseases, and how to respond to natural disasters and other emergencies.
Go beyond generic safety videos. Offer cyber‑hygiene refreshers for senior executives, situational‑awareness drills for field engineers, and medical briefings for high‑altitude worksites.
4. Monitor employee health and safety in real time.
Organisations should monitor the health and safety of employees while they are travelling, including providing access to medical support services and conducting regular check-ins to ensure that employees are safe.
GPS beacons, scheduled check‑ins, and automated welfare polls give you a live snapshot of traveller safety. If someone misses a check‑in, your crisis‑response team receives an immediate alert, cutting response time when every minute counts.
5. Review and update policies regularly.
Organisations should regularly review and update their travel risk management policies and procedures to ensure that they are effective and align with the latest best practices. This can include incorporating new technologies and tools to help manage travel risks and continuously improving processes and procedures.
Conduct quarterly tabletop exercises with Safety, HR, and IT leaders to identify gaps, and use SPHERE analytics to spot patterns, such as repeated flight delays at a particular hub, so you can adapt policies accordingly.
What Is a Country Risk Assessment?
Risk levels swing dramatically from one passport stamp to the next because each country has its own mix of political stability, crime patterns, health‑care capacity and infrastructure resilience. Think of a country risk assessment as an executive‑level X‑ray of a destination’s threat landscape. It converts open‑source intelligence, government travel advisories, insurance data, and local contacts into a single risk score that feeds your duty of care decision‑making.
Securewest International analysts refresh these scores daily through the SPHERE platform, pushing colour‑coded dashboards and local alerts straight to Travel Risk Coordinators. Clients can set risk‑threshold triggers, for instance, barring travel when a country shifts from ‘Moderate’ to ‘High’, and generate audit‑ready reports.
Rather than relying on broad regional snapshots, the assessment drills down to city level so that executives attending a conference in São Paulo, for example, receive different guidance from engineers transiting remote Amazon sites. The key elements that are assessed include the following:
- Political stability & civil unrest. Election cycles, protest patterns and coup risks are tracked to forecast flashpoints.
- Crime & law‑enforcement capacity. Crime stats are weighed against police response times and corruption indices to reveal realistic exposure, not just headlines.
- Health‑care access & medevac logistics. From trauma‑centre availability to air‑ambulance flight times, medical care is graded so HR teams understand the true cost of an accident abroad.
- Infrastructure & natural‑disaster exposure. Road quality, telecom resilience and extreme‑weather history inform routing decisions and evacuation planning.
Securewest’s Travel Risk Management Services
Plans and policies set the guard‑rails, but duty of care only becomes real when travellers can lean on immediate, expert support, no matter the timezone or threat. Securewest’s travel risk management melds live intelligence, purpose‑built technology and human expertise into one cohesive ecosystem, ensuring every step of the journey is protected.
- Journey Management. From airport meet‑and‑greet to secure hotel transfers, itineraries are mapped against real‑time threat feeds.
- Live Tracking & Check‑Ins. The SPHERE travel risk management software app combines location beacons, SOS buttons and two‑way messaging in one easy-to-use interface.
- Crisis Response. Securewest’s 24/7 Global Response Centre coordinates medical evacuations, political evacuations, and on‑call counselling within minutes of an alert.
- Training & Policy Support. Need to align with ISO 31030? Securewest offers policy reviews, traveller e‑learning and hostile‑environment courses.
Travel Risk Management That Cares
Travellers and employees both expect and deserve a trustworthy and tested plan that puts their safety first. By weaving live tracking, targeted training and round‑the‑clock crisis support into one coherent strategy, you fulfil your duty of care and keep projects on track, no matter where business takes you or your employees.
If you’re ready to take your organisation’s business travel safety to new heights, request a demo for a completely free, no-obligation demonstration from our team.