28 Duty of care questions to ask in your next corporate travel RFP
Here’s a selection of questions to include in your next corporate travel RFP in order to gather information about a TMC’s safety and security offering
28 Duty of care questions to
ask in your
next corporate travel RFP
Here’s a selection of questions that it’s well worth including in your corporate travel RFP in order to gather comprehensive information about a TMC’s safety and security offering...
2020 was the year that forced many organisations to review their duty of care programme and quickly amend it to ensure that it could provide the protection demanded by the outbreak of Covid-19.
The effects of Covid-19 continue to develop day by day. This means that, in order to be effective, your duty of care strategy should be constantly evolving and seen as an ongoing initiative that should be present in all aspects of your organisation’s corporate travel programme.
If you are looking to change your TMC this year, or next, then it is crucial to find out as much as possible about a potential TMC’s approach to duty of care and what technology they can offer to support your efforts.
Your future (or current!) TMC should be your partner in creating a duty of care programme that works for your organisation and should bring a wealth of experience to your strategy, whether that’s in emergency response, repatriations, improving employee support and effectively enforcing your travel policy.
Here’s a selection of questions that it’s well worth including in your corporate travel RFP in order to gather comprehensive information about a TMC’s safety and security offering:
Employees who understand what duty of care is, how it’s relevant to corporate travel and how they are responsible for their own safety during a trip are much more likely to be receptive to your organisation’s duty of care efforts in general. However, gaining employee support can be challenging.
Before working with a TMC, it’s a good idea to find out how they can help with improving employee engagement – this could be the difference between an uphill battle with employees and a smooth-running duty of care programme.
1. Can you advise on how best to educate our travellers on their own responsibilities regarding duty of care when travelling for business?
2. Do you have examples/case studies of how your organisation has helped clients to educate travellers on their duty of care responsibilities?
3. Do you inform the traveller about vaccination, entry (visa etc.), baggage or other regulations prior the trip - particularly in relation to Covid-19? If yes, how?
4. Will our account manager be up to date on the latest national occupational health and safety requirements?
5. How is your organisation staying up to date with governmental responses and travel restrictions regarding Covid-19?
6. Can you provide examples of communication plans and projects you have worked on in relation to educating travellers on new travel restrictions imposed as a result of Covid-19?
Times of crises put any organisation’s duty of care efforts to the test and it provides peace of mind to know that all procedures are robust before an emergency hits - particularly after the recent disruption caused in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Any prospective TMC should have experience of dealing with a range of emergency incidents and so now’s your chance to find out more about the support that they can provide.
7. Please outline your standard emergency response procedure. Can this be tailored to our organisation’s requirements?
8. What criteria do you use to determine that an incident has occurred which requires a formal response? How would you communicate with our travellers, and what recovery steps would you put in place?
9. What types of support do you offer travellers during an emergency? Is this available 24/7?
10. Can you share a case study/example of how your organisation has responded to emergencies for another client?
11. How does your organisation stay up to date regarding travel incidents and emergencies?
12. Please outline your post-emergency review procedure.
13. Can you share the various emergency response procedures you deployed during the Covid-19 pandemic?
Traveller tracking & communication
Traveller tracking & communication
Advances in technology mean that traveller tracking tools are becoming more and more common – but not all traveller tracking technology is created equally.
A TMC having access to traveller tracking tools will not automatically mean that they’re the right fit for your organisation, so finding out about customisation, current and future capabilities and integration functionality is an essential part of your research.
14. Please describe any traveller tracking tools that you provide. How do these work and what do they show?
15. Can your traveller tracking tools integrate with third-party tools?
16. What is your advice for travellers who are resistant to being tracked?
17. Is it possible to communicate with travellers through your traveller tracking technology?
18. Was your traveller tracking tool used during the Covid-19 pandemic? If so, how?
Although you can’t prepare for every emergency, you can certainly implement systems and procedures to mitigate the risk to your employees when they are travelling for business.
Being able to assess the risk level of a country before travellers are sent there can provide valuable peace of mind, as well as enabling your organisation and your chosen TMC to arrange the necessary security logistics is essential.
19. Provide information on how travel is risk assessed for individual travellers to medium to high risk locations and how are recommendations for travellers provided.
20. Do you offer any risk management services such as country profiling, in-country support or active monitoring of travellers?
21. Do you have the ability to highlight any potential high risk destinations at the time of enquiry and/or booking and advise of any potential security/travel issues? How is this communicated? Do you communicate risk rating changes?
22. Describe your ability to equip our travellers with planning and informative material before travelling. How is this provided?
23. Do you have access to information from professional and independent medical and security providers? How is this shared with clients?
Although travel policies are often thought of as documents that aim to control spend, they’re also essential to any successful duty of care programme. However, travel policies can quickly be forgotten about and become outdated, meaning that their efficacy is immediately compromised.
Find out how potential TMCs support in reviewing and enforcing your organisation’s travel policy to ensure that it’s a living document that truly reflects how your organisation travels.
24. How can your organisation help us to enforce our travel policy?
25. Does your online booking technology allow for travel policy integration?
26. How do you manage travel to locations which may only be possible via black listed airlines?
27. Please outline the process for reviewing our travel policy
28. How have you recommended that organisations amend their travel policy in light of the outbreak of Covid-19?
