the travel health and safety mistake that could cost your company thousands

8/7/2019 The Travel Health and Safety Mistake That Could Cost Your Company Thousands

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The Travel Health and Safety Mistake That Could Cost Your Company Thousands $$

Introduction

Workplace health and safety has become commonplace for most companies globally.However, the same basic standards and compliance are conspicuously absent for thosewhose workplace includes travel. If you want to know more about this mistake that couldcost your business thousands if not rectified, then read on. In this article we will look atworkplace health and safety, travel hazard identification, travel health and safety inconjunction with the potential business losses. By the end of this article you will have thefour basic steps to evaluate your risk and the correction steps to save your business fromsignificant loss.

Workplace Health and Safety

All developed countries have very matureworkplace, site or project health and safetyregulations, many with stiff penalties fornoncompliance. While the overarching legislationprovides compliance and standards guidelines,companies are able to apply their own evaluationand measurement of foreseeable threats,following a standardized methodology. Thisenables companies to benchmark their final

results and permits replicatable processes.

Due to this common approach and process maturity, many companies have ventured evenfurther by creating self imposed higher standards such as “no harm”, “zero loss”, “100%safe” and other similar internal campaigns to reduce or eliminate any-and-all injury in theworkplace, site or project.

Workplace health and safety is not just practiced in the country of origin but also applied toall their various projects and worksites around the world as a global health and safetystandard.

Construction companies have taken this philosophy to the nth degree by displaying at thepoint of entry to their project, all incidents, days lost, days since last safety event and soon.

Why is none of this applied to travel health and safety?

Travel Hazard Identification

Following on from the workplace health and safety model, activity and location riskregisters are typically made before commencement of works and maintained throughout

the life of the work activity. When was the last time you saw a travel health and safety riskregister or hazard identification register that used a standardized methodology?



If you already have a workplace risk register, documenting the foreseeable threats, nakedthreat levels, treatment solutions, control measures and residual risk level following allmodifier actions, why donʼt you have the same documentation for travel health and safety?If you donʼt apply the same process, maintain the same documentation and conduct thesame degree of education and communication to reduce the risk, for travel health andsafety then you donʼt a travel safety program at all. This mistake will not only cost you from

a productivity and efficiency perspective but expose you to legal recourse should it beproven you have failed to mitigate the travel health and safety threats of your extendedworkplace and travel activity.

Travel Health and Safety

Travel health and safety is not an unachievable task. All the steps have been exhibitedabove. The only reason it has not already been applied to any company travelmanagement program is due to ignorance, laziness, lack of education, lack of resources,over confidence and avoidance. None of which are defensible for companies that sufferloss of life, reduction in people capital, decreased productivity and financial loss.

Due to the amount or time consumed in business travel, travel may actually constitute amajority component of your overall “workplace”. This is particularly acute for companieswith high people capital business models, that sees a lot of consultants, academics,professionals or contractors traveling to the clientʼs physical business site/s from theirrespective city/country of residence.

Business Loss

You canʼt improve what you canʼt measure. Travel health and safety should be measured

for loss to the business ranging from productivity to direct financial losses. The problem isthat because the cumulative losses are rarely identified in a single cost centre or businessunit and more likely spread across multiple functions and business units, businesses fail toidentify or acknowledge these overall travel health and safety losses.

Tangible losses are one issue whereas the intangible losses are another matter entirely.Reputation, legal, market share, new business, training and development are all plausiblelosses from foreseeable risk.

Failure to implement a travel health and safety strategy will in time be discovered as agrave mistake and cost the company/business unit thousands of dollars (or more) in

losses.

Conclusion

There is no requirement to do anything new, simply extend the current workplace healthand safety methodologies to encompass “all likely places of work” which would includetravel.

The four basic steps to correct this mistake are: 1. Identify the hazards; 2. Assess the risk;3. Apply control measures; and 4. Manage the residual risk.

You should now be able to identify the significant void between workplace health andsafety and that of travel health and safety, in particular hazard identification, regulatorycompliance and the potential business losses.



Review your real status now. Identify the areas for improvement immediately, implementpositive changes and enjoy the benefits that contribute to your business travel productivity,efficiency and safety. The information contained in this article will save you thousands inpotential losses should you not consider travel a foreseeable risk to your businesstravellers or not consider travel an extension of your overall workplace.

Tony Ridley

the travel health and safety mistake that could cost your company thousands

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