How big of a role does traveler safety play in your managed corporate travel strategy?

Last year, major political changes and high profile terrorist attacks contributed to an increasing amount of travelers showing concern about their own travel safety. Reality check: is your duty of care strategy cutting it?

If you require your employees to travel for work, you already know you are legally obligated to ensure their safety and health... but you may not know there are some pretty incredible corporate travel safety tools out there to make risk management more effective. SafetoGo Technology, for instance, allows you to have access to all travelers at all times to ensure well-being during times of geopolitical unrest or weather related disasters.

But it's so much more than that, isn't it?

Besides having a duty of care strategy in place and ensuring your travelers are fully aware of it (in the least, to reassure them of your commitment to their safety), it's important to be proactive and nimble with your corporate travel policy moving forward.

For example, recent statistics have shown that the sharing economy is a disruption to the traditional travel management industry... and with growing popularity, one that shouldn't be ignored. If your employees are vehemently in favor of booking AirBnB and taking Lyft (and you believe their overall happiness and work ethic depends on it), you'll want travel policies built around unconventional lodging and transportation options not only to track expenses, but to avoid risk and identify locations. Without mandated quality control on AirBnB health, safety and security standards, can you educate your employees on choosing the least risky of these privately owned accommodations? If they prefer ride share transportation, can you teach your travelers to preset their destinations to avoid unpredictable routes?

In addition, the stressful components of business travel are enough to debilitate even the most seasoned travelers. What are you doing to educate your travelers on their options when it comes to lost baggage, damaged baggage compensation, flight delays and lost productivity? Are they aware of the travel support options available to them, even if it's as simple as an emergency contact card they carry in their wallet? Do you know what preferences can be met to set a reasonable if not extraordinary bar for comfort (especially for your VIP's?)

We believe that a safe, comfortable (and dare we say enjoyable?) business travel experience is not only an important obligation of every organization, but a huge factor in the success of your organization's business travel objectives.

If you are concerned about gaps in your duty of care strategy, we'd love to help you fill them.