Today more than ever, employers and their organization’s teams travel abroad to realize specific jobs, conferences, and more, with the pleasure of relaxing. These “pleasure trips” have many benefits, but there are also many risks and potential issues if the trip isn’t planned correctly.
The Importance of Safety During Trips
Businesses have to protect their employees from many emergencies during a trip away from home and their office and have a backup plan. Doing so is called safety culture, and it begins its practice during working hours.
Preventing any accident, illness, pickpocketing, or weather is among travelers’ most critical issues outside the country. Committed business leaders must include guidelines for their employees to ensure all their members are completely safe from problems.
Benefits of Developing a Safety Plan
A businessman must provide the necessary tools for safe and successful trips. There are many ways to do so, including integrating business travel security into existing policies or creating a new separate document. Still, both methods have to protect a worker in many situations, such as:
Enhanced Security
Employees are exposed to huge risks abroad if they’re not cautious enough. These endless possibilities can go from natural issues like weather problems to more deep political ones like terrorism or civil unrest.
An excellent corporate safety plan can prevent or try to avoid these situations by alerting the team about them with all the needed information.
Increased Trust and Retention
Allowing the team to travel for work has many productive benefits, which can help them avoid looking for considering new job opportunities. Also, it helps to boost professional development, both Group and individual, helping with fulfillment and performance.
On the other hand, a poor experience or bad travel planning can impact safety risks and the employees’ morale.
Saves Time and Money
A travel trip can lead to higher profits and revenue, but only if it’s planned and executed correctly, with proper preparation. Not doing so makes employees more likely to find many complications while doing their tasks, making the company spend additional resources to solve them.
Tips to Ensure Business Travel Safety
Along with developing a good safety plan, there are many other tips, tricks, and methods every leader needs to know about to ensure their group members’ well-being. These are some of those recommendations:
1- Develop a Safety Policy
Being proactive is always a better option than being reactive. Business travel safety and security policies are the best ways to protect your workers abroad, including all training, procedures, and resources needed to avoid any situation.
2- Prioritize Health and Safety
While some risks are more predictable than others, the truth is that it’s impossible to read the future, but many things can be done to avoid many of these issues. Therefore, health and safety should be any leader’s front and center of focus.
3- Delegate Responsibilities and Tasks
Assigning role responsibilities is the best option for planning a trip and ensuring everything goes smoothly. However, depending on the nature of the journey, some situations can be overwhelming for only one person to plan them all.
A team backing up your plans and helping with complicated operations will make it more manageable and avoid forgotten points.
4- Create a Checklist of Vital Things
While safety travel checklists vary from destination to destination and the company type, there are a few things that every list needs to have included. Excellent pre-trip planning, safety-related objects, documents, healthcare data, and communication protocols are necessary.
5- Establish Reporting Processes
Even if the plan is successfully created and every documentation is up-to-date, complications can still happen due to forces unrelated to the company.
Staying in communication with agents related to travel plans to learn about canceled flights, delays, or booked accommodations can help to act quickly and avoid issues.
6- Invest in Communication Software
Using the right tools can ensure that every employee is safe during a trip. Communication software can help you to stay in touch with them in case of any emergency. Good software needs to include the following capabilities to be considered:
- Intuitive interface to send and receive noticeable notifications.
- Two-way messaging software to reply and update status.
- Wellness checks to ask and check if an employee needs something.
- Emergency hotline available 24/7 to call for help.
- Centralized information where events are updated with all the related information.
These features ensure fluid communication between workers and their bosses whenever they are, at any moment of the day.
7- Be Medically Prepared
When planning, always take into account where hospitals and clinics are located. This becomes even more vital if any team member has some health complication that needs to be periodically checked.
Bring enough prescription drugs and some extra in case of any delay. List all the related allergies or health problems the members have. Also, provide information related to immunizations, mental health, and more.
Ensure your reservations and groups also have your mobile number to contact you. The company’s number, travel management company, airline, car rental, family or friends, and hotel numbers are also substantial.
8- Have a Copy of Important Documents
Take photos or scan essential documents related to the travel and members’ information. This should include passports, visas, driver’s licenses, and credit cards.
Every photocopy should be kept in a different place to be a backup in case the original is lost. Having a digital copy uploaded on some cloud service like Google Drive or Dropbox is another bright idea.
9- Protect and Take Care of Luggage
It’s common knowledge that there’s a slow but existing risk of luggage getting lost or stolen when traveling abroad. Unfortunately, this can happen for many reasons an individual cannot avoid. Still, some security measures can be added to restrict other people’s access to your team’s belongings.
TSA-approved luggage locks are the best security locks for checked bags. Screeners at the airport can check what’s inside and re-lock it without breaking or damaging it. Also, you can apply a 3-digit code number to add an extra layer of security.
Another known method is the stainless wire mesh bag, which provides maximum security. It can be attached to almost any furniture, pipes, or fixtures in a hotel room in case safes are too small for your objects.
10- Always Stick with the Group
The role of a leader is always to keep the team together, safe, and secure from any complications. A sense of unity can help everyone not only to be productive during work but also to avoid risks. In addition, being all together in a “pack” can prevent thefts or harassment.
11- Bring the Needed Products for the Occasion
The boss always has to be prepared and a step ahead. Since you should know what to expect about the destination you and your team are going, you can get certain gift pack products that can help the section both for pleasure and their well-being.
For example, most companies schedule their trips to the Caribbean, and many forget to include vital products that can protect their skin from the sun. A corporate gift can help with this, providing your team with sunscreen, towels, hats, beach bags, and many more valuable items for the trip.
Many other bundles, prepared for different occasions, are a fantastic way to demonstrate that you care about your team and are always ready.
Conclusion
Knowing how to plan a trip based on safety tips for work travel is extremely important to ensure everything goes smoothly and nothing wrong happens. To do so, increasing security, awareness, and communication is almost mandatory.
Also, remember to always advocate for your team’s unity, productiveness, happiness, and well-being since all of those are significant factors for a successful trip.