5 Travel Risks Employers Should be Aware of

Is it a requirement within your organisation for travelling employees to complete a Travel Risk Assessment (TRA)? Or are you simply concerned about the safety of your transient employees who may be constantly on the road (or in the air) conducting their duties?

Either way, it’s always a smart idea to be aware of the possible travel risks your employees may face so you can take a proactive approach to minimise these. Here are five of the most common travel risks:

1. FATIGUE

Statistics show that 20 percent of fatal road accidents occur due to fatigue, rising to 30 percent in rural areas. This could be down to the longer, monotonous routes undertaken in rural areas that decrease alertness, but is most likely due to the worker being genuinely fatigued due to long shift hours. It’s critical for organisations to manage the fatigue level of its drivers by placing policies around the number of hours worked that can impact their safety on the roads, and ensure that workers declare the number of consecutive shifts they have undertaken before getting behind the wheel. There have been recent legal victories by workers suing their employers for road accidents occurring due to fatigue – so it’s wise to ensure a fatigue management policy is initiated.

2. TRAVELLING SOLO

Do you have employees travelling alone to, or through, remote areas? If so, how are you managing their health & safety and ensuring they reach their destinations smoothly? SafetyIQ is one such tool that helps you track these workers, sending out alerts should they not check-in where and when stipulated, so that you can react immediately and accordingly. It’s critical to be across this issue and have protocols on how to respond. Typically a road accident in a rural area can be more dangerous since, not only will medical assistance take a little longer to arrive, but the accident may also go unreported for some time if not witnessed.

3. DESTINATION RISKS

The destination of an employee’s work will impact a lot on the potential risks they may be exposed to. It’s important to provide a duty of care to your workers, contractors and volunteers by assessing the environment they are heading into and provide advice and support in each instance. Will they be driving to local communities or homes that have hostile environments? Will they be travelling internationally to a place with different customs and cultures? Or will they be visiting a location that has potential health issues? By equipping your workers with the knowledge in advance – plus providing Journey Management software to ensure they reach, and depart, their destinations safely – you can hugely minimise any risks that could cause harm to your employees.

4. UNPLANNED CRISES

What happens if you have workers en route to an area – locally or internationally – that has just erupted in violence, or perhaps a devastating natural disaster has just occurred? Perhaps unlikely, but not impossible, which is why any TRA should should take into consideration what policies and tools are in place to support those employees that may find themselves in this ‘worst case scenario’. SafetyIQ, for example, can inform managers where their employees’ last checked-in so that they can reach out directly to make sure they are safe and can then communicate to help them immediately relocate, or else warn those en route to divert.

5. CRIME

For workers travelling out into the community or to an overseas destination, it’s important to review if any criminal activity is present in the location they are going to. Every employee deserves to travel without fear of consequence, so due diligence on the destination is a critical component in your duty of care as an employer. Provide employees with a transparent overview of risks and how these can be managed and avoided; whether this be pickpocketing and theft, or extortion and kidnapping. Review what your policies are to keep tabs on your travelling workers and ensure their safety is paramount at all times.

Please take the time to view how a Travel Risk Assessment can be seamlessly implemented for your corporate travellers.

Keeping People Safe

Knowing your travelling employees are safe, is no longer a concern. Take a look how you can monitor your mobile workforce whilst increasing operational productivity.