The majority of citizens do not pay much attention to the safety of travelling until something bad happens. You make your flight reservations, grab your laptop and fly to that conference in Mumbai or client meeting in Lagos without even thinking of it. However, this is the point – business travel is not without risks like your normal vacation to Spain.
Reality of Business Travel Risk.
When you are commuting to work, it is usually to new cities, at times in a country where the security situation is hardly stable. You may have costly gear in your hands, be staying in hotels alone, and on tight deadlines that do not afford you much time to plan carefully. Combine jet lag with it and you have a perfect recipe of vulnerability.
Even the threats are not necessarily dramatic. Yes, hostile environments do exist wherein journalists and aid workers have real risk of danger or loss of life – kidnappings, civil unrest, and conflict zones. However, in the case of the vast majority of business travellers, the risks are more prosaic: petty theft, travel fraud, medical crises in countries with questionable healthcare, or just losing your way in a city where you do not speak the language.
Good training really covers what.
Appropriate travel safety education is not about frightening the population or cotton wooling them. It is about providing employees with knowledge and empowerment to deal with whatever they meet.
A good course will include the practical aspects: how do you research your destination appropriately, what do you do when your passport has been stolen, how do you know when a situation is getting sketchy, and how do you know when to listen to your gut and flee. It concerns situational awareness – that skill of reading a room, that you can detect when something is amiss, and take action before things get out of hand.
The optimal training employs real life situations. You could practise what you should do in case you are held at an inspection point, how to respond to questioning which is aggressive, or what to do in case of a natural disaster when in a foreign country. It will take some time to feel comfortable role-playing such situations, but it is much better to trip over it in a safe training room than to have a panic attack when it counts.
It’s Not Just for War Zones
This is a myth: travel safety training is not only for individuals travelling to risky nations. That’s rubbish. They must learn the fundamentals even when you are sending your personnel to Paris or New York. What are your tips on how to prevent being mugged in the metro? So what then should you do in the event of a terrorist incident? What do you do during a medical crisis in a place where you are alone without any idea of the local medical system?
There are other considerations that female travellers need. Although we all would enjoy living in the world where gender does not determine your security, the truth is not the same. Training which recognises these particular risks without being condescending can have a huge impact.
The Legal Side
And there is the legal aspect, on top of the moral responsibility of keeping your employees safe. The companies in UK owe a duty of care to their workers, whether they are sitting in the office in Manchester or on a mission in Nairobi. When something goes wrong and you have failed to offer the necessary training or risk analysis, you might be facing a big legal liability.
Good travel safety training is also useful in your risk assessment process. Understand the possible risks and once staff understands them they can better flag concerns before they travel and add to more comprehensive planning.
Making It Stick
Most corporate training is of the problem that it is a boring part and people forget it as soon as it ends. Courses that really work are courses that balance theory and practise, ones that expose students to practical experience, and courses that provide a context within which the students can pose questions, without feeling stupid.
Other organisations have trainers within the organisations to conduct face-to-face training. Others also make use of the webinars on staffs distributed in various countries. The way it is presented does not matter that much but the quality of the content and its interest. When your group is rolling its eyes and glancing at their cell phones during the meeting, you are killing people with time.
It Changes Behaviour
The greatest recommendation to travel safety training can be the fact that individuals put into practise what they have learnt. Employees who have undergone adequate training have said they feel more confident when they are travelling. They decide more, they are more conscious of their environment and even more important they leave safely at home.
A journalist who also took hostile environment training is quoted later stating that the course saved his life when he was filming in Cairo in heavy conditions. The other attendee who was sceptical at first brought it back raving about how helpful it was and everyone needed to do it. This is the difference between checking a box and properly preparing people.
The Bottom Line
This is modern working life, business travel. It can be crucial to a number of companies. However, it is careless and, quite frankly, dangerous to all the parties to send their staff to other countries without even the slightest preparation.
The training about decent travel safety does not have to be costly or time-consuming. Even half a day long session can include the basics and provide individuals with the means of remaining safe. And when you put into consideration the cost, financial, legal and human of making a mistake, it is an investment that can be returned so many times.
Your employees are supposed to have the confidence to go on a trip knowing that they know how to handle any circumstances they may find themselves in. Provide them with that and you will have a safer, but better team on the road.