Corporate travel is an opportunity to consolidate the company’s brand in the market, generate authority and provide good experiences for employees. Fortunately, along with the awareness of the importance of corporate travel for the reputation of a company, companies of various sizes are more concerned with ensuring safety at these events.
Employee integrity should be a constant concern, especially when the professional has a high frequency of trips. This not only improves employee satisfaction, but also ensures that the company will not suffer from lawsuits in cases of employee damages.
What can be done, however, to ensure the traveler’s safety? Check out, below, some of the tips we have gathered for you!
Why has the traveler’s safety become so important?
Corporate travel aims to provide new meetings, partnerships and perspectives for employees and, consequently, for the company. By ensuring that the trip will have no inconvenience and taking away all the traveler’s concerns regarding the organization of the trip – whether in relation to stay, food or transportation – you ensure that the professional focuses only on being successful in the business.
Essential measures to ensure the traveler’s safety
Some adaptations in the company’s routine and in its manuals of conduct make the trips more tranquil. Understand.
- Offer good health insurance to your employees
When the company works with invoiced forms of payment, it needs to acquire travel insurance. Even if this represents a high cost for companies with many employees, it is not recommended that employees travel without this service.
The new rules of SUSEP (Superintendence of Private Insurance) establish that the already known health care needs extra protection for international travel. Therefore, you need to have an insurance policy for each trip to be made. This service can be provided by a corporate travel agency.
Requiring travel insurance is simpler than you might think. It covers from departure to return, in the countries of exit and entry. Nowadays, most companies work with credit cards that include the health insurance service. For this convenience, it is common for employees moving from city, state or country to work to opt for health insurance linked to the company’s credit card.
Even in these cases, it is important to decide for an insurance that guarantees by law the same quality health care that the employee has inside the company, anywhere in the world. Also analyze the national legislation, as well as the international legislation, before making the choice of insurance. There are countries with some requirements for immigrants and visiting guests. Make sure they do not create diplomatic burdens or problems.
- Check the site’s hospital infrastructure
When assessing health insurance, also consider the site’s hospital infrastructure. Do preventive work with the employee, so that you make sure that the country visited does not offer risks to the employee. In case of positive risk, the company needs to guarantee the minimum conditions for a safe stay.
- Provide medical services to places with risks
Study the situation of the medical services in the place where the employee will be sent, as recommended vaccines, various precautions in relation to food, water and health standards. The company should provide advice to the employee who will make the trip and also assess the real need to travel to countries at risk, for example.
The occurrence of terrorist threats and specific laws regarding the international relationship between the country of origin and destination, as well as particular documentation and codes of conduct, should be carefully analyzed. It is also necessary to be informed of times and places susceptible to natural phenomena that require care, and to invest in employee tracking technologies and tools to transmit all travel information to the company.
- Count on a travel compliance policy
As stated at the beginning of the text, some innovative companies already incorporate travel security policies into their manuals of conduct. Your company’s administrative rules should be studied and analyzed with specialized corporate travel agencies.
Instruct your employees with theft prevention measures in relation to route planning and indicate the contacts to be sought in the event of such incidents. The loss of documents can generate great embarrassment and stress for your employee.
In addition, your company should have a contingency plan in place, capable of moving the employee to a safe place or bringing him/her back to the country in emergency situations that include threats of war or terrorism.
- Restrict the number of travelers on the same flight
It is important that you never have 2 or more representatives or senior executives on the same flight. This requirement should be made by both the company and the insurance company. When inserting this policy in your conduct manuals, also define who is responsible for it and for ensuring information and contacts to family members and anyone else who needs to be reported on any occurrences.
- Have Risk Management Tools
The travel company must offer, within the OBTs (online booking tools), the management of all possible risks that the traveler may have. Some global tools are suitable for tracking passengers and aim to ensure their safety.
An OBT system stores the confidential information of the employee and the company as well as the travel policy. Establish measures for all requests to be made by the system, so that the company responsible for tracking receives the information in real time.
In this system, everything is recorded. You gain more control, as does the tracking company, so that the travel agenda is adhered to. This integration is great for the traveler’s security and for the improvement of well-being and productivity, bringing many benefits, such as leading to a positive return on investments and business resilience.
- Count on a corporate travel agency
A corporate travel agency handles hotel reservations, ticket purchases, manages cancellations and offers expert help in contracting insurance as well as collecting the necessary documents.
Ensuring the integrity of employees keeps your company up to date with corporate obligations, social responsibilities in relation to travel, reduces financial and legal risks and protects the brand and image of the company. In addition, your representative will be more relaxed to do good business!