With an incentive travel program firmly entrenched as part of your corporate culture, your employees are frequent fliers. Even for non-incentive travel, it seems your people are scattered all over the place on any given day, doing what they do for your business. But all that travel comes with risk. That risk is amplified if you do business in parts of the world known for unstable governments or a restive population. But all over the world, terrorism, technology, natural disasters and other factors mean that travel can spell anxiety for your employees. In fact, 67% of business travelers report feeling a little queasy when headed to ports of call once deemed safe. This post is dedicated to incentive travel risks – what every company should know. These are key considerations because the safety of your people matters to you. But you could get caught in the crossfire, should something untoward happen.
Your company is responsible for traveling employees, both legally and morally. Your incentive travel program (and your business travel policies, generally) should have risk management built into them. This is a multi-departmental endeavor, encompassing travel, human resources, legal and management. Now’s the time to ensure coordination across these departments and to review wording in place to cover contingencies for traveling employees. Duty of care is a very real corporate responsibility and one you need to ensure you’re fully prepared to honor in the event of accident or injury while your employees are on the road.
Assembling a travel risk management program should incorporate several key elements. This can be accomplished by drawing together oversight from the departments implicated (as outlined above). The risks involved in incentive travel should be identified as part of creating the program. In concert with assessing the exposures faced by traveling employees, this process serves to create a framework which helps to manage risk and to respond rapidly when it becomes a reality in your organization. Assign responsibility to a manager or a team of managers to ensure the program is not just in place, but dynamic and responsive. Part of managing incentive travel risk is knowing who your traveling employees are, where they’re going and what they’re going there to do. But that’s not enough. Monitoring their location and wellbeing in real time by maintaining constant contact is a proactive approach many companies don’t take but should. Managing incentive travel risks shouldn’t be languishing at the bottom of the pile. Due diligence is required to ensure that your company is modeling proactive and responsive duty of care and procedures to ensure the safety of its traveling employees.
For more than 2 decades, ITG has been creating superior incentive programs, meeting and conference support and incentive travel planning and execution. We support your corporate goals by offering outsourced logistics, coupled with 20 years of experience in the sector. Our knowledge of destinations and vendors is comprehensive, offering you extraordinary support that motivates and inspires your employees. Ready to manage incentive travel risks? Let’s talk.
