When you send someone on a trip, you have made a decision on their behalf. They are in an unfamiliar city, on your instruction, at your expense. That carries an obligation, and it does not end when the ticket is issued.
Duty of care, in one sentence
A reasonable employer takes reasonable steps to keep travelling staff safe and informed — and can show, afterwards, what those steps were. Everything else is detail.
Know where your people are
This sounds obvious until something happens. If the only record of an itinerary is a forwarded email in one person’s inbox, you do not have a travel programme; you have a filing habit. Trips booked in one place can be found in one place — at speed, by someone who is not the traveller.
Brief before departure, not after arrival
A short pre-trip note costs ten minutes and changes the whole trip: route and neighbourhood risk, which transport to use and which to avoid, health and vaccination requirements, local emergency numbers, and the name of the person who will pick up the phone if things go wrong.
Then actually answer the phone
Most travel support is excellent between nine and five, when very little goes wrong. Flights cancel at midnight. Bags disappear on a Sunday. Borders change their minds on a public holiday. Support that exists only in office hours is not support; it is an office.
The measure of a travel programme is what happens on the worst night, not the smoothest one.
Write it down
A duty-of-care policy does not need to be long. It needs to name the escalation path, the approval thresholds for higher-risk destinations, the insurance in place and what it actually covers, and who decides when a trip is called off. Ambiguity is only comfortable until the moment it is tested.
It is also a retention issue
People remember how they were treated when they were far from home and something went wrong. They talk about it — to colleagues, and to candidates. Looking after travellers is not only a legal position. It is one of the cheapest reputations a company can buy.
Come and talk to us
Tell us where you need to be, and we will work out the best way to get you there — and back.