Travel Risk Management: Safety is Top Priority

Each year, business tourists expand their travel geography. Not so many countries locates, for example, in Africa, Asia, Middle East or Latin America, can boast their economic and political stability, well-developed healthcare or low crime rates. This, many companies view travel risk management is an indispensable part of their work aimed at ensuring the maximum available safety for their employees making business trips. Oleg Koninin, Marketing and Sales Director, International SOS, Russia, shares the specifics of doing business in this sector.

— What factors shall be considered first in developing the travel risk management policy?

— First, the company must carry out a detailed assessment of any existing risks and their possible negative effects. We often make this analysis together with the company management and try to cover both existing and potential exposures locally and globally.

It’s hard to believe, but in most cases problems arise immediately when we try to define the number of travelling employees and/or those involved in foreign projects. After that, we carry out the assessment of risks specific for regions and locations where our travelling personnel are employed. A detailed review of expected exposures often gives rise to unexpected findings. Along with such evident emergency effects as financial losses related to medical services, evacuation and employee replacement, there are more serious effects, such as tarnished reputation, impaired performance and profit loss. Normally, this analysis makes company aware of the benefits of introducing travel risk management practices.

— Who is normally responsible for risk mitigation during business trips in Russian companies? Is this scheme any different from the established practice of US and UK corporations? How do they pursue this policy?

— It is impossible to delegate responsibility for health protection and good work conditions! In legal terms, any failure to ensure the above mentioned conditions falls under responsibility of the company management bodies. This also includes fire safety. In case of any emergency, the charge will be brought against company’s top management; and if such emergency results in profit loss, the stakeholders will also charge company’s top management.

In practical terms, some company’s business units are responsible for safety measures ex officio, such as, security service, medical director, and HSE manager. No doubt, each of the above units must be engaged in the travel risk management system. However, neither of them is able to meet health protection and safety challenges alone without support of top management, HR department, travel managers and insurance relations department. This holds true for the USA, UK and Russia.

— Do the International SOS statistics show any increase in the risk events in 2011 compared with 2010 results? What conclusions should be drawn in this regard by the companies which are not your partners or have no travel risk programs at all?

— This year was very challenging for us all. Such global crisis events as the Arab Spring in the Middle East and African counties, the earthquake and tsunami which ruined the nuclear power station in Japan, catastrophic earthquakes in New Zealand and public unrest in London showed that the risk exposure is ubiquitous, even in the countries traditionally viewed as well-developed and safe. Last year, we allocated all our resources to arrange approximately 3,000 evacuations from Egypt and Lebanon and render assistance on 2,000 appeals from Japan. Thus, we may consider the second half of 2011 the most challenging period even for our company.

Besides, last year showed that Russian companies are tapping the developing markets of India, Africa, Middle East and Asia much more often than Western companies do. Unfortunately, we have to acknowledge that most Russians arrive to these countries completely unprepared and have to shift for themselves, if anything goes wrong. Consequently, Russian tourists are the ones to suffer from frequent cases of malaria, Dengue fever and other infections. The relevant warnings, preventive vaccination and simple instructions could prevent most of these risks which are sometimes fatal.

We should keep in mind that the developing countries have other manageable risk exposures, such as high criminal rates, dangerous roads and political unrest. I am sure that companies committed to a reasonable travel risk management policy show higher profit margins compared with their competitors relying on hit-or-miss situations. The responsible companies have high performance rates, their personnel is much better motivated, they lose less work time and incur less costs in the need to replace their experts.

— Does your customer base include any companies present in Russia’s trouble spots, like the North Caucuses? Please, share your experience in working with them.

— Yes, many our customers are doing business in the so called «trouble» spots. In order to improve the situation there, the Russian Government seeks to invest billions of budget rubles in the development of local infrastructure, transport, energy facilities, and school and hospital construction. This process involves construction, energy and other companies working there. They keep coming to us and asking the same question: is it safe to work there? We give our advice on mitigating their risks. No doubt, the North Caucasus is a high risk zone; however, it opens new prospects of economic growth to our customers, and our goal is to help them to arrange and secure their business. The same holds true for any other hot spots across the globe, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, etc. Our advice is based on high quality professional knowledge as the company employs over 1000 healthcare professionals and 200 security experts. Besides, our company is a partner of Control Risks, a global risk consultancy, and RMSI which is focused on emergency medicine and rescue operations in the most hazardous regions world-wide.

— What in your opinion should do to properly instruct their employees going on business trips? Who should advise them of exposures inherent in any given country?

— We identify five components in our travel risk management system. The first component involves preliminary employee training for travel, including information on any hazards arising on their way and on location, and training seminars, such as addressing safety measures, as well as medical surveys and vaccination.

Another important component involves compliance. This means checking compliance of all documents and procedures with the company’s code, availability of all permits, paid insurance policy, completed reports, etc.

Then there is control. This means clear understanding of where and in what number our travelling employees are located. For example, if any terror act is reported in the airport (as was the case with Domodedovo), the security manager has to have an exact knowledge of which employees might happen to be on the scene and, possibly, be injured.

One of the most challenging categories involves communications, i.e. continuous feedback, regardless of the circumstances. Unfortunately, most companies fail to maintain continuous communication with their employees who happened to be on the emergency scene. Here, critical factors include cultural, language and psychological aspects, as the direct communication with the employees is often broken and may be maintained only through agents, local intelligence agencies and rescue service.

And, finally, there is feedback. If the accident occurs, despite any preventive measures, the company must make any efforts to support the victims onsite and give them any possible help. Our global network of 24/7 coordination centers, air ambulance, hospitals and authorized contractors enable us to give help any time at any place world-wide.

— Do you provide first aid and fire safety training to your employees? Do you impose any requirements on your customers regarding their corporate safety, such as fire evacuation plans or fire extinguishers availability?

— We strongly encourage our customers to spare no time and effort for personnel emergency training. First aid training is our product which we seek to include in each offering. The same holds true for any evacuation or emergency response plan which are a must for offices, factories and enterprises. Sometimes we engage additional experts to perform tasks which are beyond our competence, such as developing fire evacuation plans.

Not only is it critical to train personnel to act in emergency, but also it is important to prevent such emergencies. For example, our training programs «Stress Management», «Alcohol Abuse», «Smoking» and «Respiratory Diseases» are becoming increasingly popular. Therapists use simple interactive forms to hold discussions and help the participants to become aware of their personal responsibility and, thus, reduce risks related to any health problems.

— What kind of services do you offer on the Russian market?

— We develop individual service offers with a view to the interests and needs of each organization. Our key offer involves access to our global resources, expertise and knowledge through our membership programs. International SOS card gives our customers the right to consult with the best experts in the field and activate our services any time and any place globally. Normally, we offer annual service programs which cost depends on the number of travelling and ex-pat employees. The customer may further purchase one or more additional products, such as, TravelTracker, a software program to keep record of travelling employees, or an automated emergency alert system which cost also depends on the number of expected users. Training and targeted consulting programs are evaluated on the number of training days. Unfortunately, I cannot quote any exact prices, but the cost of our services is comparable to the cost of one airline business class ticket Moscow-New York for one top-manager. His company may not even notice the amount of our fee in the total company budget.