Risk Management for Travelers During an Emergency

Weather, pandemic, natural disaster, social unrest: Travel and risk go together. Risk is particularly common in business travel, as it isn’t always possible to delay a trip to risky destinations. If you had employees on location at a job site during a crisis situation, do you know what you would do to locate them? What if cell phone service was down and you were unable to reach the members of your team?

Because these dangerous situations are always unforeseen, businesses need a risk management program that anticipates emergency situations while quickly implementing an emergency plan that can quickly locate workers and bring them to safety. 

In fact, as an employer, you don’t just have a moral or ethical obligation to help your employees while they’re traveling. Companies have a legal obligation, called “duty of care,” toward their traveling employees. 

What does “duty of care” mean?

Duty of care is a company’s moral responsibility and legal obligation to protect the health, safety, and security of its employees. Providing a safe work environment also extends to the time when an employee is traveling on behalf of the company. Depending on the scope and location of travel, travel risk management processes may include pre-trip assessments, communication check-in requirements and backup plans, an evacuation plan in high-risk areas, and contracting with third-party services to manage arrangements needed to get your workers back home safely.

It begins with travel planning

Your duty of care to your employees starts before the trip even begins. It is vital to research your employee’s destination as well as any current or anticipated conditions that might affect travel plans. For example:

1. Are there any known local, regional, national, or international circumstances that might impact travel safety? These could be things like weather, terrorism, epidemics or pandemics, or political instability. Keep in mind that while your current location and the worker’s destination may be safe and secure, your employees may have to travel through areas that are not as safe.

2. What do you know about where your employees will be staying during their trip? Hotels are located in many different neighborhoods, some of which may be unsafe. Another consideration is the security protocols established and enforced by a particular property. It’s important to research these protocols so that you know that your workers will be safe during their stay.

3. Does your worker have any personal safety concerns? For example, if your worker has a medical condition, you’ll want to ensure that the worker can get appropriate emergency care if necessary.

Locating your employees

When an emergency happens, part of your duty of care as an employer is being able to locate your employees and respond to help them. That’s why CLC Lodging offers duty of care and risk management tools to help you keep your travelers safe and respond appropriately. This includes our unique mobile app and also provides all-in-one travel research, booking, and duty of care reservation mapping services.

Traveler Tracker mapping feature. Our traveler activity mapping feature lets employers easily search for travelers’ itineraries from a single portal. In a crisis situation, you can access real-time data about where your employees are across the country by tracking their hotel reservations to see where they are currently staying and viewing upcoming reservations reports to see where they are supposed to go next.

24/7 traveler support and safety. CLC Lodging’s skilled 24/7/365 traveler support center can help employees re-route their travel and find new accommodations quickly in the event of an emergency. No matter the time of day, if something happens, employees can have peace of mind knowing that they will not be stranded.

Hotel research, booking, and billing services

By researching accommodations ahead of time, you can get the information you need to select the right hotel for your team. CLC helps handle billing issues, which can help protect your team against credit card fraud. 

Contact CLC Lodging to learn more about locating your travelers

Ensuring the safety of your employees is a top priority for all businesses, and CLC Lodging helps you provide duty of care to your employees when they are traveling for business. Our service also helps you control costs while streamlining travel booking.

Contact us to learn more about our Traveler Tracker feature and traveler support today.