Out of sight, out of mind

Globalisation and the search for the new opportunities that come with it is now so well established that we are unlikely to see the back of it in any hurry. One of the inevitable consequences is that business travel is not only a great deal easier than it used to be, but is also increasingly necessary in the search for competitive advantage in established or emerging markets.

As new markets emerge, and as the search for resources, competitively priced manufacture, or sales opportunities in developing countries continues, the need to send employees abroad to the less familiar, and potentially more dangerous, parts of the world is unlikely to diminish. But in blithely dispatching your employees to far-flung parts of the world, have you taken account of the risks?

Duty of care

An organisation’s duty to look after its workforce does not cease the moment an employee walks through the embarkation gate to start a trip abroad. If anything, its duty of care obligations are increased. This may come as something of a shock to those who think primarily of providing a safe workplace and avoiding the risk of reasonably foreseeable injury as being the extent of their obligations, but a body of case law in Europe, the US and Australia firmly suggests otherwise. Although the legal extent of duty of care varies, a summary of some of the cases over the last decade, gathered together in International SOS’s white paper Duty of Care of Employers for protecting international assignees, their dependants, and international business travellers shows the extent to which duty of care may be held to reach in different jurisdictions. For example:

• Injuries on a business trip are work-related, even if occurring outside working hours (France)

• If an employee is ‘subject to company decisions’ while abroad, then an accident can be defined as an ‘occupational’ accident (Spain)

• An employer has a non-delegable duty of care and cannot avoid liability by delegating responsibility to a subcontractor (UK)

• Where an employee is assigned abroad, a company has a duty of care to the employee’s dependants (Australia)

• An employer has a minimum responsibility to find, and make available to the employee, publicly available information on health hazards (US)

Within the EU, there are rules governing which jurisdiction will cover employment cases for cross-border workers. Elsewhere, the situation may not be so clear, and multinational companies may face complex problems in trying to sort out where a case should be heard, and under whose law.

However, while the details and the degree of an organisation’s duty of care to its employees vary from country to country, the general thrust of most regulations are similar. To quote the white paper, ‘they focus on the general obligation of the employer to protect the physical and mental health, safety, security and well-being of employees, wherever they work, whether at the work site, at home, or abroad.’ Additional duties may be imposed or implied, such as briefing about known risks, providing information, training and providing assistance.

The moral angle

If your employee suffers an injury or needs assistance while working for you abroad, do you argue your corner at law, or do you do your utmost to assist or compensate, even if the legal responsibility is unclear? Here, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the reputation of your organisation come into the equation. The ‘uncaring’ employer makes a wonderful media target. For example, on 22 January, The Herald carried a front page story of a UK teacher who had been injured while breaking up a playground fight. The local authority which employed her refused to pay her £2,500 dental bill, on the grounds that her injury was not due to their negligence. Whatever the legal niceties, the message sent out is a very damaging one to the employing organisation. The message will be even worse when an employee is in severe trouble abroad, and a company fails to provide adequate support.

But there is a further consideration, which is that your employees are likely to do a better job for you if they feel that a support system is in place for them while they are abroad.. ‘What you want is the people on the ground to feel secure and safe,’ says Travis Vincent, director of security services, International SOS. Yet a survey of business travellers from the UK and the US, carried out in 2007 by Control Risks, found a disturbing degree of neglect and naivety in precisely this area. 59% of British business travellers surveyed had little confidence that their company would be able to give them any advice if there was an emergency; 40% had no idea who they would call to alert their company to an emergency; 38% never carried out any research into the political or social situation of the country they were going to, while 72% carried no specific contact number which they could call for assistance.

At the same time, however, 86% believed their companies had a legal duty to advise and support them, while 53% thought the world would become a more dangerous place to travel in over the coming five years. Overall, business travellers from the US had far more confidence in their company’s support.

Illness, driving, theft

The same survey showed that business people were more worried about the threat of kidnap, terrorism or war than they were about the more mundane risks, such as traffic accidents or illness. Yet, especially in developing countries, these risks become greater when travelling than they are at home. A World Health Organisation report in 2004 estimated that 1.2million people died in road accidents every year with a further 50 million injured. The same report estimated that in low to middle income countries, that toll was likely to increase by 80% by 2020. Accurate data from the developing world is hard to come by, but China and India both stand out as high risk, while within the OECD, Russia, Slovakia, Poland and Turkey are the most dangerous countries in which to travel by car, with Belgium making the list at number 10. The business traveller who sticks to taxis, or even company cars, is far from immune.

Taxis hold other dangers too, especially in Latin America, where ‘express kidnapping’ is fashionable. The victim is held for 48 hours to maximise the amount of cash that his captors can withdraw from ATMs, using his cards. Add to this, the risk of street muggings, theft of laptops from hotel rooms, or stolen passports with consequent visa problems – all of which can disrupt or make useless a business trip, and providing rapid assistance on the ground begins to make good sense.

Although ordinary travel insurance should cover most medical eventualities, a sick employee in a country where he may not speak the language, and where health care standards may be low, is in a vulnerable position. Does his employer have a duty of care to provide assistance over and above the terms of the insurance policy? Has the employer even put him at risk by failing to brief him on health dangers, or through failure to ensure he has the necessary vaccinations?

Kidnap, terror, natural disaster

The high impact risks may be relatively uncommon, but they should not be ignored. Business travellers worry about them, especially as western businessmen are attractive targets. And if an employee disappears, or may be involved in a terrorist incident or a natural disaster, the employer’s ability to provide assistance from scratch is likely to be severely limited. Such risks should be thought through in advance, and appropriate protection measures put in place, long before travel commences.

Risk managing business travel

Ensuring the health and security of your travelling employees is an area which can really benefit from a company-wide integrated approach. It starts (as usual) with a clear policy decision by top management to make sure their legal and moral obligations to employees working abroad are not just adequately covered, but covered in such a way as to make their employees confident and secure.

According to Travis Vincent, many large multinationals, together with companies, such as oil exploration companies who are well used to the risks of working in the developing world, are well aware of the need for this. ‘It is the companies who are expanding that need to think more about it,” he says. “There may be a business case, but they need to think what they have to do to focus on their team on the ground.”

The risk management case is that the cost of prevention is likely to be cheaper than the cost of dealing with the incidents, and the benefit to morale and productivity is substantial. But as in many cases involving intangible risks – such as low employee morale, or difficulty in recruitment – the costs may be easily reckoned; the benefits less so.

A starting point is to put together a team to analyse the travel patterns of employees working abroad. Which countries are involved? What is the frequency of travel and the time spent abroad? Are there people on long-term assignments abroad, and do they have dependents? What kind of work are they doing? What incidents have there been? How did we fulfil our duty of care? Once this information is to hand, it is time to call in the professionals who specialise in providing assistance abroad. Depending on kind of risks a company is facing, an assistance package can be put together, which will be able to cover health and security aspects under one umbrella.

Don’t neglect the briefing

An important aspect of the duty of care is to ensure that employees travelling abroad are provided with full information concerning the risks to them and how to mitigate them. A hastily assembled folder of notes is unlikely to be adequate. In some cases, training – in personal security for example – may be recommended. In others, detailed briefing by those familiar with the country in question may be of great benefit. On the health front, a UK legal case suggests that simply telling an employee to ‘get your vaccinations up to date’ may not be sufficient to fulfil your duty of care. You need to ensure the employee complies.

If something does go wrong, and you have covered the widest possible definition of duty of care in providing timely assistance, you will have fulfilled your fiduciary duty, saved yourself both worry and cost, and proved that you are a caring employer, that people willing to travel abroad should be pleased to work for.