Ensuring your duty of care programme can support travellers now and in the future

ATPI's recommendations for duty of care technology that will ensure your travellers are fully supported as travel begins the journey back to normal

Ensuring your duty of care programme can support travellers now and in the future

Here are our recommendations for duty of care technology and processes that will ensure your travellers are fully supported as travel begins the journey back to normal:

Ensuring your duty of care programme can support travellers now and in the future

Traveller safety has long been a priority for travel managers and their organisations, but the events of 2020 have pulled duty of care into even sharper focus.

The level of risk associated with travel has increased over the last eighteen months and while we hope this will change over time, dealing with the challenges presented by the outbreak of Covid-19 looks set to remain the reality for travel managers and travellers for the foreseeable future.

The first step in preparing your organisation’s duty of care programme for whatever the future holds is to establish what duty of care measures you had in place pre-pandemic, what you have implemented as precautionary or emergency measures over the past nine months and whether what is currently in place is fit for purpose when your organisation starts to travel again.

Here are our recommendations for duty of care technology and processes that will ensure your travellers are fully supported as travel begins the journey back to normal:

An updated travel approvals system

The outbreak of Covid-19 has changed the criteria as to what constitutes necessary travel for many organisations and so ascertaining the reason for travel is now more important than ever before. The right travel authorisation workflow will make these reasons more visible, allowing key stakeholders to assess the motivation for each travel request as well as highlighting which roles and departments need to travel the most and where to.

A thorough but efficient travel approvals process can provide some much-needed reassurance to travellers who might feel nervous at the thought of making their first corporate trip in a while. Knowing that multiple stakeholders, who have access to detailed information regarding risk assessment and travel guidelines, have approved a trip can help travellers to feel more confident.

The ability to customise your travel approval system as your organisation’s travel requirements change over the coming years is essential. As travel restrictions change and the world develops new ways of controlling the spread of Covid-19, the style of approval that your organisation requires right now might be vastly different from what your organisation needs in a year’s time. Your organisation might also want to implement different approval workflows depending on the reason for travel or on the traveller themselves - the right travel approval system will make this possible.

Understanding of ISO 31030

Although ISO 31030 was not created to specifically address the challenges and anxieties surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, the publication of the new global benchmark couldn’t be more relevant.

Welcomed by those responsible for the management of corporate travel, ISO 31030 provides organisations with the chance to boost internal assurance about the safety of travel, as well as improving employee’s confidence in travel. Meeting ISO 31030’s standards will show travellers that your organisation is taking all necessary steps to mitigate travel risk.

ISO 31030 is yet to be published, but we expect it to contain guidance on topics such as scope, context and risk criteria, risk management processes, management of travellers and recording and reporting. The guidelines are expected to be published in full by the end of 2021. We have put together a short FAQ document sharing what we know so far about ISO 31030 in order to help travel managers be best prepared.

Pre and post-trip communication

Now that most corporates have repatriated stranded employees and developed new duty of care processes for essential workers, attention should once more turn to the mental wellbeing of travellers. At a time when so much to do with travel feels uncertain and can trigger feelings of anxiety and nervousness amongst travellers, it’s best practice to plan ahead for how you will properly support your team once they do start to travel again.

In order to ensure that travellers feel as confident and comfortable as possible in the run up to a business trip, corporates should take a considered approach to the information they provide their employees with. Timing communication so that it doesn’t get lost in inboxes and stays top of mind for travellers is an important strategy in avoiding communication overwhelm and delivering information when it's most relevant. Providing regular touch points, such as regular calls, webinars or newsletters, that update travellers on travel regulations and your organisation’s duty of care process is also a good initiative to implement before travel resumes.

Post-trip surveys can be a useful way of collecting the experiences of those who are travelling and using them to inform your organisation’s new corporate travel processes. For example, if a returning traveller tells you that they did not feel well-informed about the health and safety or quarantine requirements of their destination country then you can ensure that you provide future travellers with more information.

Consider asking questions about how they felt before, during and after the trip, how the trip impacted their work and home life and whether they would’ve liked your organisation to do anything differently to better support them. Your TMC will be able to advise you further on post-trip traveller surveys.

Targeted traveller updates and alerts

Staying up-to-date with the latest travel advice regarding Covid-19 and avoiding information overwhelm seems like a Catch-22, but it’s a challenge that many travel managers are having to undertake.

Although it’s important to have access to all necessary information that pertains to travel restrictions, governmental advice and test and vaccination developments, it’s even more important that the information travel managers are exposed to is relevant and accurate. An uncertain and emotive situation, such as the pandemic, is ripe for misunderstanding and inaccuracies to flourish and so working based on accredited and reliable information is essential.

We would recommend streamlining your information sources and prioritising those that are verified and can be tailored to only share information that is relevant to your organisation's location, your travellers’ most frequent destinations and the way that your company travels for business.

Talk to your TMC about accessing apps and widgets that search for the travel restrictions, governmental guidelines and testing policies for an upcoming trip or relevant location and present you with only the most relevant information. It is also a good idea to ensure that you and your travel stakeholders are signed up to a real-time travel alerts service such as ATPI Alerts.

Build your own business travel roadmap

In this roadmap we’re offering you the chance to develop a strategy that is geared towards the priorities that your organisation has for corporate travel right now.

By selecting a few of the elements of corporate travel that are more important or intriguing to your organisation, you will create a roadmap of things to investigate and implement over the next few months.