The Knowledge: Travel risk management

Travel risk management (TRM) has evolved significantly over the last few years and what used to be thought of as adequate will no longer suffice. Read on to find out how one company developed a far more resilient operation.

THE BACKGROUND

One of the world’s largest aerospace companies with around 150,000 employees had a travel risk management model in place that seemed to have successfully met its travel, medical and security requirements for several years. Traveller tracking, risk intelligence services, secure journey management and emergency response were all part of standard travel policies.

But with natural staff turnover and an apparent rise in hazardous incidents, there was concern that awareness of practices – and even the services themselves – was not sufficient. Furthermore, the services weren’t integrated but since the TRM plan had a safety net in the form of a phone number to call in the event of anything going wrong while on the road, the programme, to all appearances, seemed to work fine.

THE TRIGGER

Then suddenly, civil uprisings and unrest erupted close to one of the company’s overseas plants and a large number of personnel required evacuating from the area. In such a situation, even the most easily accessible and rapid action of an emergency phone number was just not adequate. After the incident, the company reassessed its TRM and knew that the only solution to achieving a highly resilient risk mitigation practice was a comprehensive solution fully integrated into its day-to-day activities and included, but also went beyond, the standard travel-related issues.

THE PLAN

The company sought a strategic partner to work with on two levels. Firstly, to understand its needs and implement a TRM solution that would meet the prior solution’s capabilities. And secondly, to improve and evolve the solution over time, factoring in the company’s broader strategic objectives, business operations and pain points. Ultimately, it brought the Anvil Group onboard to deliver the solution.

“Travel risk management needs to be viewed as part of a much broader operational consideration. In order to protect their people and ultimately achieve true resilience, organisations need to be able to identify, assess, manage and mitigate risk effectively. Simply responding to incidents is not enough,” says Matthew Judge, Anvil's Group Managing Director.

THE OUTCOME

What materialised was a proactive approach that incorporated a number of components communicating with each other automatically. They included 24/7 response and assistance, secure journey management, and global risk intelligence analysis and reporting. In addition, the company particularly benefitted from an employee tracking and alerting service and threat awareness reporting.

All the elements – each a part of Anvil’s Riskmatics solution – were synchronised, delivering improved information and intelligence that it could utilise to better manage the different risks that its travelling and remote employees experienced.

“Companies of this size are bound to be exposed to increased risks and to be affected by most major events that occur throughout the world,” says Judge.

“But companies of any size should not be leaving the safety of their employees to chance. In a changing world, resilience is crucial in lessening the impact of an incident, speeding recovery after one, and maintaining strong business operations.”