For two years, businesses of every size and around the world
have reconsidered the notion of travel
risk management with the background of a global crisis without any real
precedent. Interdisciplinary corporate teams and task forces—many formed in the
early days of Covid-19’s spread—worked during travel’s shutdown to reassess
their notions of and policies surrounding traveler safety and security and
analyze how their corporate structures can effectively deliver it.
Now, as business travel aggressively puts a foot on the
accelerator for domestic travel and as countries around the globe once again
welcome international business travelers, those organizations can put their
strategies into practice.
They can assess their methods for tracking every traveler,
regardless of destination, and see how mobile communication platforms function
in a real-world setting. They can show travelers the intelligence they’ve
gleaned about countries, cities and hotels, and the advice they’ve put together
for travelers to follow to help ensure their security. And they can see how
their own internal communication processes function, so internal managers for
travel, corporate security, human resources and other departments can work
together to support travelers and, if need be, bring them home.
For those who haven’t embraced the necessity of
developing a travel risk management program, there are a number of first steps
to take and any number of third parties and suppliers who can help along the
way. Considering the ways in which risk minimization can support corporate
goals and objectives could be a good start, as is learning the company’s
responsibility for business traveler duty of care. Developing a comprehensive
travel risk policy is a move all but certain to pay off, in both small and
pandemic-sized ways.