Dear fellow safety practitioners, The company I work for has a team of eight sales people who travel worldwide to over 120 different countries, some exotic and some not so exotic. I have been asked to prepare a report for consideration of the Board of Directors on business travel risks and mitigation, obviously there are DVT and other such risks associated with flying. However the Board are more interested in the reducing the risks to the sales people dependent on where they are going, South America, China, Russia, Iran, Africa to name a few. We already have a risk assessment approach to foreign travel and the sales people fly business class on long haul flights, they plan their visits upfront and have medical insurance, key contact details, inoculations, medical kits with clean needles and are issued with flight socks. I have also considered the use of third party involvement as there are companies who provide emergency response, daily email updates on natural disasters, civil unrest, etc. They can also provide training on situational awareness and risk reduction techniques. One such company provides this level of support for BBC journalists. As you can imagine involvement with such a company is quite expensive, however when you consider the countries where the company expects the sales employees to travel is this cost unreasonable? I would be interested to hear how other company's manage foreign travel risks, which will enable me to benchmark our company against other organisations that have a similar travel footprint. Any advice or pointers would be greatly appreciated. Regards Paul

If you or your senior management think that the costs are deemed as unreasonable I would expect you have assessed the risks and likelihood of this service being required? All this is dependable of many factors: Number of overseas travel Countries travelling to Duration of stay in higher risk countries Response time where assistance is required Agent in host countries appointed - how effective are they in handling situations A large corporation like the BBC would entail using a larger organisation for assistance, also they would have an interest in the PR and CSR due to being publicly accountable?

There are lots of specialist companies who can provide urgent meidcal help, security, travel advice, local assistance, airport pickups etc... Also some provide security training to both those who travel and those who organise the travel. To most this might not seem that necessary, like airport pickup? But until your have travelled through Africa including places like Port harcourt where militants and criminals can pray on unwarely businessmen, when you get mobbed outside the airport by 100 people you will wish you had planned more ahead. Also some of the local medical facilities in these areas are not that great and can be more a haven for things like malaria. In the end its all about spending money on things you hope you never have to use or need, but I would rather have it and not need it than need it than... Des