IN today’s environment, travel risk management has become a discipline that companies, especially those with high business travel volume, are adopting in the hope of minimising the risk their travellers are exposed to.
Increasingly, contingency plans are being put in place that enable tracking down and reaching travellers in the fastest possible time should the need arise.
Travel-related companies such as Abacus International show the way: its travel policy does not allow more than five employees travelling on the same flight; it registers its travellers with the Singapore consulate at the destination and encourages travel on a need-to basis. Associate director, group account team, Mr Bruce Tan, added: “Our travellers are well-covered by insurance and evacuation policies, but we also give them the right to refuse travel if they do not feel comfortable for any reason.”
iJET Travel Risk Management, CEO, Mr Bruce McIndoe, said most companies had some level of emergency assistance, typically travel and medical, for their travellers but they could no longer merely react. His company helps clients to develop, implement and operate travel risk management programmes.
Mr McIndoe recommends a continuous model that includes planning, three levels in training (employee, professional/adviser training and crisis management team training), 24-7 monitoring, incident response and after action review, which then goes back into the planning stage and the cycle begins again.
He said: “Travel risk management is a corporate responsibility. In preparing for
the unexpected, we have to first identify the possible threats, evaluate the nature of these threats, set acceptable levels of risk, mitigate the exposure, monitor the situation and respond as appropriate.”
Mr McIndoe said: “Most companies rely on their TMC to handle this responsibility. For companies that have a single, global TMC, this approach may work, but for companies with multiple TMCs, it is extremely difficult and time consuming to integrate and report on this information.”
Wrisney Tan
