With global mobility on the rise, more businesses are engaging with domestic and business travel trips for their employees. Although these trips may be low risk, with security risks and instability taking place in historically safe locations, travel monitoring and tracking plays a key role in keeping our people safe.
Achieving global operational resilience heavily relies on a safe, secure and healthy workforce. Whether your employees are permanently located overseas, or on a shorter-term basis, you have a Duty of Care to protect them from potential risks.
The risk exposure in one location may drastically change, month to month, day to day. As a business owner it is your responsibility to have robust contingencies in place in case your workforce becomes exposed in the event of an emergency. One way to solidify your travel risk management strategy is to protect your employees with a monitoring and tracking system.
Although some employees may question its information security and privacy, it is aimed to protect your people from harm. The benefits of travel tracking and monitoring are listed below:
Benefits of Travel Tracking and Monitoring to Protect your Global Workforce
1. Communicate when it matters most
Quickly understanding the after-effect that the crisis might have on your people, organisation and assets is critical. Using an employee’s geolocation, your organisation can quickly locate and communicate with those impacted.
Relying on one sole channel for communication may not suffice in times of crisis. Due to overloaded cellular networks or internet outages, it is important to adopt various modes of communication from email, SMS, app notifications or text-to-speech.
2. Improves Safety and Security
Your Duty of Care is to the safety and security of your global workforce. Knowing where your employees are during a global security incident is vital. This will also help to facilitate support or potential evacuation should it be necessary.
Through an assistance app, your people can check in to proactively identify their location. Then tracking and monitoring allows your organisation to locate employees that may be impacted by a local incident. Your people impacted are then able to receive the required care and support.
3. Accelerate your Crisis Response
Should an incident occur, understanding the impact on your people and operations can be a time consuming and challenging task, especially when time is of the essence. With an effective crisis communications tool, a trigger will go off following a critical incident to identify which of your people are impacted. As a manager, you will be able to determine their safety with regular updates. As an organisation, you are prioritising the safety and security of your people, a critical part of an effective crisis management strategy.
Best practices in Travel Monitoring and Tracking
If you are looking to use travel monitoring technology to track your global workforce, you should consider the following best practices:
Create a Monitoring and Tracking Policy
Travel monitoring and tracking demonstrates you take the Duty of Care of your employees seriously. A policy should be clearly defined as part of your overall travel risk management strategy. This should be clearly explained to your employees alongside its benefits.
Obtain Consent
Consent is essential. It is critical to ensure your entire workforce can be protected. Through a policy or opt-in tool, employees should be empowered to consent to having their geolocation shared in the event of an incident.
Use Verified Monitoring Technology
Using verified and certified monitoring technology software is essential. You must use a registered, reputable, and verified vendor that strictly adheres to all aspects of privacy and applicable regulations.
How we can support you
For over 35 years, International SOS has been at the forefront of supporting organisations' global workforce. We help to ensure that your organisation adopts a comprehensive and integrated approach, considering both health and security risks. In the event of an incident or crisis, our Tracker tool and Automated Crisis Communications ensure your people are safe and receive the required assistance.