How do successful company’s implement Travel Risk Management? What are actually the success factors when running such a project? In order to find this out, I was recently allowed to interview a larger number of Swiss multinational companies of different industries and size. My interview partners could not be more divers from each other. Nevertheless the following three similarities between each emerged during the course of the project.
Travel Risk Management is not a question of size: The smallest surveyed firm - a successful Swiss financial services company - employs a total of just 100 employees. The largest interviewed - a global technology group - has several hundred thousand employees worldwide. Other respondents were medium-sized organizations with 5000 to 50000 employees. Despite their different sizes, all had in common that they have successfully gone the way of implementing a travel risk management program. Although there are differences in details and budgets, the basic idea is equal with all interviewed.
Duty of Care always comes Top-Down: Travel Risk Management is multidisciplinary. Successful projects always involve several internal ones stakeholders. Mostly HR / mobility, travel and purchasing. But finance or communications departments also play an important role. Importantly, top management initiation, sponsorship and involvement has been mentioned to be the decisive success factor in all successful implementations.
"We do it because it is the right thing to do”: There are many reasons to look after safety of the employees on business travel. The legal component around paragraph 328 of the Swiss Code of Obligations is obviously important to all respondents and project managers, but is only one among many others. The changing global environment, terrorism, Brexit, Donald Trump and business continuity were also mentioned alongside with reputational risks to the organizations. For all companies the main reason to look at the topic is however that it they believe to do everything possible to protect their most important asset – their employees.
The main motivation for investing in travel risk management is therefore the moral responsibility of the employer towards their people.
Source: "Business Travel Traveltip" Nr. 2/2017 Juni/Juli - www.businesstraveltip.ch
Originally published in German language - translation by Birger Oldorff
Birger Oldorff is Founder and Partner at Reisesichertheit.ch