Travel is a part of many businesses and the requirement to travel abroad will often be an important part of a job role. To expect employees to know what to do when travelling abroad is unfair, and might result in you putting members of staff in danger, especially if they are inexperienced travellers – just because somebody is a good employee, doesn’t mean they will know how to handle being in a different country, in potentially hostile and difficult situations. As a business owner, you should consider putting your employees through business travel courses before sending them abroad, to make sure they are well equipped with the knowledge and information they will need ahead of their business trip. This will make you a responsible employer, and will help your staff members to feel more at ease when away from home in potentially confusing and/ or concerning situations.
There are many different types of travel safety course your employees can undertake, and the ones you choose will very much depend on the types of trips your employees need to take. Think about some of the following points to help you decide on an appropriate travel safety course:
- What will they be doing whilst they are out of the country? If your employees will be visiting high risk areas, then you need to take this into account and consider equipping them with higher risk strategies to make sure they can cope.
- How much experience do they have? If they have travelled abroad to similar areas, they will probably be in the right frame of mind for business travel. If not, then you will need to think about starting them off with more of a beginners’ course.
- Where will they be travelling to? Think about the areas they will be entering and the kinds of risks they will pose. This will help you ascertain how you should approach travel safety and what you will need to cover in the courses.
The travel safety market is huge and there will be different courses for you to select, based on employees’ needs. Some of the most popular are:
- Hostile environment training. This will only be appropriate if employees are actively going into hostile areas, so will be more relevant for some businesses than others. If you are an NGO and you work with the media, this might be something that you need to think about.
- General business travel advice. Everybody can benefit from general travel training, covering points that will help ensure people’s safety and security when abroad. These types of courses will specifically cover business travel, looking at issues like online security and staying safe with technology, as well as general personal safety and security, and how to handle yourself in a new environment. Any staff working abroad should have this kind of training to make sure they can look after themselves.
- Security training. If your staff are security personnel, or if they might need some security training to go to the areas you need them to visit, this is the kind of course you will need to consider.