Make Sure Duty of Care Is in Your Travel Policy

Make Sure Duty of Care Is in Your Travel Policy

Duty of Care

Make Sure Duty of Care is in Your Travel Policy

Duty of Care is the legal term that refers to the obligations organizations have to take practical steps to safeguard their employees/volunteers against any reasonably foreseeable dangers in the workplace.

For employees/volunteers who travel abroad, the risks can be quite different from those in the home office. Threats of overseas assignments include terrorism, lawlessness, crime, political instability, infectious diseases, accidents and travel-related illness. Organizations are expected to be familiar with the threats associated with a particular work assignment and take steps to inform and prepare employees/volunteers for those risks.

So how does an organization protect itself and its employees/volunteers?

Firstly, have a system where all information about employee travel is in one place. This information should be detailed and current. Have a protocol that informs the company of where each employee/volunteer is at any time. The simplest way of going this is to work with Raptim Humanitarian Travel. Their new Raptim Care product offers the ability to provide organizational and reporting infrastructure ,and is likely to be more accurate than most organizations could achieve on their own.

Depending on your needs, costs are minimal and provide significant return in employee safety costs, liability and peace of mind.

To support Duty of Care, organizations should develop an internal travel policy, which needs to be communicated to travelers.

Benefits of a travel policy:

  • Approved reliable and knowledgeable travel provider of complicated international travel
  • Accurate reporting for budgeting purposes
  • Adherence to approval process set by organization and reinforced by your travel partner
  • Accurate tracking of staff for insurance purposes
  • Credit card reconciliation reports
  • Payment and purchase of travel through one source allows the organization to clearly prove to the CRA/IRS, the direction and control of charitable funds
  • Less administrative time and cost to the organization when charges are made to the corporate credit card/s as flights are invoiced monthly instead of dealing with each flight invoice individually
  • Accrual of frequent flier points on the corporate card/s reduces cost of administrative travel to the organization
  • Setting of advance booking requirement provides cost savings to the organization
  • In the event of any disruption travel provider has the ability to rearrange flights
  • Access to Duty of Care program and Crisis Management
  • 24/7 emergency service
  • Secure storage of passport information
  • Secure storage of credit card information
  • Storage of individual traveler profiles
  • Ability to limit the number of employees/volunteers travelling on a particular flight
  • Agency can handle the communication back and forth with the field staff ,freeing up significant administrative time
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