Traveller welfare / Introduction
thinKing differently
Burned-out and de-motivated staff who donʼt perform, increased staff turnover, and a poor reputation for your business among potential recruits... it is no wonder companies are moving duty of care and traveller welfare up the agenda, says Gillian Upton
T
he Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 was not only a landmark piece of legislation when it came onto the statute books in 2008, but also a huge wake-up call to corporates to ensure they fulfiled their duty of care to their employees. In the intervening decade, TMCs and specialist third parties such as International SOS have been doing brisk business in risk management, traveller tracking and repatriation to keep travelling employees
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safe from harm. Now the boundaries of duty of care are stretching to incorporate a holistic view of travelling employees and traveller wellbeing is the new buzzword. “All successful businesses understand that their people are their most valuable asset and so they build strategies for traveller wellbeing in addition to risk mitigation arrangements,” says Scott Davies, CEO of the Institute of Travel Management. “Whilst cost control is an essential focus, organisations are increasingly aware that they are asking more and more from their people and therefore the need to support their wellness at work is mostly increasing.” But is that awareness translating into action? HRG Consulting has been in the forefront of using metrics to track traveller burnout. They provide data to highlight the pinch points in existing travel policies. A threshold of ten hours in economy, high frequency of trips, long layovers, too many Red Eye flights, travelling through multiple time zones and insufficient downtime between trips are some of the negative physical impacts of travel. HRG is then able to rank those travellers most at risk. There is mounting evidence, for example, that disrupted body clocks from flying
through too many time zones increases the likelihood of liver cancer. There is a real risk of DVT from flying too many long-haul sectors, and too frequently, in economy class. Law firm Pinsent Masons, for example, issues compression socks to its frequent travellers, as does engineering firm Spirex Sarco. Where these issues start to get noticed in the boardroom is on the bottom line, when employers have to absorb recruitment costs of 25% of their staff every year. An issue over talent retention should be a red flag to an employer and the solution could be a more generous travel policy. ITM’s Davies has some insight as to how travel policies can be used. “In some industries, such as professional services, the travel programme is sometimes used as an employee engagement and satisfaction differentiator,“ he says. Measuring the risk as a starting point can be frustrated by company structure as part of the issue is a lack of joined-up thinking within organisations. Often, wellbeing sits within HR or medical but that may only involve a vaccination programme. “Organisations have got to break out of their silos and join up more and get more insight on the pinch points,” advises Dan
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