How To Secure Employee Business Travel With Legal Assistance
In the world of employment and corporates today, business is cross-sectional with employees required to travel for business often. During the last two years, things had turned remote and virtual, but many companies are getting back to their old models.
While business travel may sound fancy, and several employees look forward to it, there are also risks attached to these trips.
Just like any travel, the employee needs to look after themselves, and their belongings, including the company’s property, if they’re carrying any office paperwork and gadgets.
However, the responsibility to ensure that an employee completes the trip safely is that of the company. This blog post will talk about the Duty of Care, and how a company can look after its employees better while they travel to get work done.
What is meant by Duty of Care, and why is it important?
It is the moral and legal obligation of a business to provide a duty of care that extends beyond the office space. When your employee travels to accomplish a business objective, this duty of care should be able to protect the professional, no matter which location they get sent to.
For a corporate traveler, this spells arriving in a new city with the conviction that their organization has their back and will look after them.
There are several things that could go wrong potentially when your employee goes on a business trip. Here, the organization needs to ensure all of it gets taken care of. Some common challenges that may arise out of corporate travel are:
- Missing the scheduled flight
- Losing or theft of their passport or other critical documents
- Falling sick abroad or in a different city
- Operational or rideshare accidents
Tips to help you look after your employees on business trips
From the section above, you’ve seen what Duty of Care is about, but what does it include? Here are a few helpful pointers.
- Legal help: Your employee may encounter a few situations on their trip which may require legal assistance. One such common yet dreaded situation is getting into a rideshare accident. When you’re abroad or in an alien city with no clue where to get help, your company’s rideshare accident lawyer can step in and take care of all the aspects. Whether it is getting them immediate medical help or suing the rideshare company for damages, the legal expertise of the professional will help mitigate any problems that may arise.
- Medical policies: While your employee is on foreign soil or event raveling domestically to get work done, there lies the potential threat of falling ill. This is even riskier today, as the pandemic virus has several variants, and vaccinations are not a hard stop for getting sick with it. Your company should already have an extensive medical policy in place for employees that get sick while traveling for business to look after them well. This may include treatment, medical care, holistic care, and aftercare.
- Ticket booking: The tickets of flights are always changing, but sometimes a delay may cause the employee to miss their flight. This could be due to any reason, be it an emergency, traffic, or other engagements. The Duty of Care is to be able to acquire corporate tickets to the next flight so that there are no delays in the plans further.
- Accommodation and meals: Once your employee reaches the business destination, looking after their stay and meals is the responsibility of the company. Keeping their safety and comfort as the highest priority, it is necessary that you book great accommodation facilities and provide good meals to them. The meals may also be added to the corporate card, which is a common practice.
- Travelers Insurance: When employees travel for work, they’re most likely carrying company properties like contracts, paperwork, corporate devices, and the likes of it. It is the responsibility of the company to ensure all these gadgets and the personal belongings of the employee are secured with best business travel insurance for employees in case there are damages or losses that occur as a result of the travel.
Final Word
In today’s world, having an impressive working environment goes way beyond the bare minimum of providing good projects and delivering salaries on time.
The employees and workforce are any company’s greatest and most valuable resource, so looking after them, especially when they travel for business, is your responsibility. Do everything possible to take care of them especially during business travels. Consider business travel insurance for employees in the event of damages.
When you set up provisions to keep them safe and comfortable throughout a work trip, you will also notice the performance, motivation, and results being more fruitful. Take this blog post as a sign to upgrade your Duty of Care policies, if you haven’t already put these measures in place.
