It’s nearly midnight, and your employee’s connecting flight has been canceled. The next available departure is tomorrow afternoon. Nearby hotels are filling up. Renting a car and driving for hours is an option, however this person has been awake since 5 a.m. and must be on their game for an afternoon client presentation.
They text their manager: “What should I do?” Crickets. The manager is asleep.
Nobody meant to leave the employee stranded. The trip was approved, the flight was booked, and everything looked perfectly reasonable on Tuesday when the itinerary came through. But now someone needs to make a decision, and the person who needs help doesn’t know who can make it.
This is where duty of care becomes much more than a paragraph in a company travel policy.
What Are Companies Actually Responsible For?
In business travel, duty of care broadly means taking reasonable steps to protect employees from foreseeable harm while they’re traveling for work. Specific legal obligations depend on the jurisdictions and circumstances involved, so your legal counsel should determine what applies to your business. There is no single checklist that answers the question for every employer.
The practical side considers the risks of a trip, preparing the traveler, and deciding how your company will respond if they need help. For businesses developing a formal program, ISO 31030 provides international guidance on managing travel risk. However, it’s a framework, rather than a universal legal requirement.
You can’t control the weather or persuade an airline ticketing agent that your meeting is too important for a cancellation. You can make sure your employee has someone to turn to when the itinerary falls apart. And you can evaluate what makes for itineraries that are less likely to have glitches.
A Trip Can Look Perfect in Theory
An overnight flight followed by a two-hour drive might get someone to a meeting on time. Whether they should be driving after that flight is another question. The hotel within the company’s nightly allowance might require a long journey back after a client dinner. A late arrival might be manageable with a car arranged in advance and considerably less appealing when the traveler is standing outside an unfamiliar airport trying to find one. The devil is in the details.
Taking care of business travelers also means paying attention to ordinary details: when they’ll sleep, how they’ll get around, and whether the schedule adds a level of unnecessary stress on them.
It also means allowing for an employee to say, “This arrangement won’t work for me.” Health concerns, accessibility needs, and other personal circumstances can affect a trip in ways a standard corporate travel policy cannot or does not accommodate.
Your most experienced business traveler may be the last person to complain. That doesn’t mean every arrangement works for them.
Could You Find Your Travelers When It Matters?
Imagine severe weather disrupts a city where your company does business. Who’s there today? You might know who was scheduled to go. But did someone change their flight? Move to another hotel? Stay an extra night?
If the updated information is scattered across individual email inboxes, you have some time-sensitive sleuthing to do when time is of the essence.
Make sharing itineraries and changes a normal, easy part of company travel. Employees should understand what information is needed, who can see it, and how it helps the company support them.
Settle the business-plus-personal question before departure. If someone adds a weekend after a conference, clarify how company assistance and insurance apply during those extra days. “Well, I just assumed…” is an unfortunate response to a question about coverage.
A Phone Number Is Only Useful if Someone Answers
Back to our midnight business traveler. They need a place to sleep and help getting to their destination. They should know whom to call, and the person answering should know what they can do.
That requires answering questions ahead of time:
- Who handles travel problems after hours?
- Who can authorize an overnight stay or a change of plans?
- What happens if the first contact is unavailable?
Give employees clear instructions for urgent medical or safety situations, too, including when to contact local emergency services. Rebooking a flight and arranging emergency medical assistance call for different expertise.
Then try the plan against a realistic scenario. If booking a sensible hotel requires permission from someone who won’t check their phone until morning, the approval process needs reworking.
Where CIRE Travel Comes In
Understanding the person and the purpose behind a trip is part of planning it. Timing, routing, flexibility, company requirements, and individual preferences all affect the arrangements. When plans change, employees need support working through the options.
Because the next available flight isn’t automatically the right answer. What happens to the airport pickup? Can the traveler still make the meeting? Does an overnight stay make more sense than pushing through?
Those details are connected, and they are often too “detailed” for a company employee to manage 24/7. Having a corporate travel partner working through them can take a huge burden off both the traveler and the person managing travel back at the office.
CIRE’s role is to bring travel expertise and personal attention to the arrangements and the decisions around them.
Ask How the Trip Went, and Listen to the Answer
Once an employee is home, it’s easy to think it is a done deal. But being responsible for duty of care takes asking the traveler how it went.
Could they reach someone? Did they know what they were allowed to do? Was there a point when they felt they were on their own? If you hear, “It was fine. I figured it out.” You may have a resourceful employee, but a gap in your travel program, which could leave you remiss in your duty of care.
For more about working with CIRE Travel for business travel, visit our Corporate Travel FAQs.
And if you’re unsure what would happen if one of your travelers calls at midnight, let’s talk while it’s still business hours.
CIRE Travel is a full-service travel agency headquartered in New York, NY with offices in Kennebunkport, ME, Washington, DC, Boston, MA, Atlanta, GA, Los Angeles, CA, and Philadelphia, PA. Our expert corporate travel planners, honeymoon travel agents, and luxury travel planners support clients across the country and around the world.
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