Business travel has become an integral part of conducting business and as such needs to be considered in duty of care with health and safety policies.

Business travel is increasingly international in scope, and more companies are obliged to take steps to protect the health and safety of their employees who are traveling or living abroad.

Corporations have the responsibility to ensure that employee travel is as safe and secure as possible.

This responsibility also extends to an employee's family when they accompany the employee abroad.

Business travelers should have 24-hour access to an assistance center that can deal with any security/safety issues that may arise.

When discussing safety and security, the focus tends to be on the most prominent issues like natural disasters, terror incidents and kidnapping. Less dramatic, but far more frequent, are issues like car accidents and medical incidents abroad.

The broader notion of traveler well-being and duty of care issues are not only linked to emergencies and medical incidents. The stress of business travel caused by delays, lost baggage, less productivity (yet consistently high workload) or the simple fact of being away from friends and family should not be underestimated.

This raises awareness of the employee perspective around duty of care and provides an overview of the key components in travel risk management as part of responsible travel management.