Business Travel & Managing Expectations

"Sir, if you are out and about, sense the situation is not right and feel that you need help, call me and I shall come get you.” (Rescue Coordination Center Director, Bogota, Colombia). My job overview, given to a 4-star General in about 30 seconds.

Preamble.

          Can you, a leader, imagine coming into your US-based corporate office early on a Monday morning and around midday to early afternoon, one of your employees comes in and says, “Our Lima office called and said that Johnny didn’t show up for their 10:00 AM workshop.”  Realizing Johnny, assigned to your department, traveled to Lima the Friday prior, there must be a lot that is running through your mind right now! After all, it was you who said, “Get there a couple days early and have a look around!” Uh, oh, now what?

Accountability.

          As the former director of Personnel Recovery Centers located in US Embassies Bogota and Mexico City, the critical keys to our successes involved maintaining accountability for embassy personnel, recognizing early when someone becomes endangered or goes missing, and knowing what assets I could leverage that would immediately and willingly respond on our behalf.

          Relative to maintaining accountability for embassy personnel, that did not mean forgetting about them over the weekend and suddenly remembering the following Monday when someone abruptly makes a point to tell me that “Johnny” is missing. Understanding the inherent risks to operating in foreign countries besieged with violent and organized criminal actors, while knowing US government employees were regularly targeted, I recognized that too many bad things can happen in the span of 72 hours. My minimum “tolerance” for knowing the status of travelers (accountability) was once-daily communications and often, depending on the situation, twice daily communications while always requiring travelers to turn on their tracking beacons when outside of a hotel or designated lodging.

          When initiating a response to recover an endangered person or persons, mere seconds could mean the difference between a successful outcome and catastrophic failure. The earlier I became aware that one or more of our embassy employees had become endangered, the faster our rescue center could respond and the more I knew about a traveler’s itinerary and planned activities, the more focused our response efforts were. For example, when prosecuting search operations, a recent last known position of the endangered was certainly valuable information in that it afforded us the luxury of executing a more focused search. Conversely, searching for a person who is reported missing and whose last known contact was a couple or more days prior to the incident being reported, entails a broader and more time-consuming effort that almost always require significantly more assets.

“When was the last time you heard from Johnny? your VP or CEO asks. “That would be four days ago, before Johnny left” you sheepishly reply. I would hate to be in your shoes at this moment in time. Why? Because Johnny is missing, it’s been four days since anybody has heard from Johnny, you don’t even know if Johnny made it safely to his hotel, you didn’t receive a detailed written travel plan from Johnny beforehand, and you are the one who told Johnny to travel a few days early and have fun.

Back during my active-duty days and while assigned to the 5th Special Forces Group, which is based out of Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, I was the designated troop commander aboard an Air Force C-5 Galaxy cargo aircraft. Just before the doors closed for our departure and deployment to Kuwait on the heels of the first Gulf war, our Battalion Command Sergeant Major (CSM) boarded the plane and gave a short “motivation” speech. It went well but I had this sinking feeling in my gut when our CSM closed his remarks by saying, “…and remember men, when you stop in Rota, Spain, party like Vikings!” Well, we stopped in Rota, Spain for 3 nights and as the Air Force “fixed” our plane, many did party like Vikings! On departure to Kuwait, we had three missing soldiers who missed movement. We knew they hadn’t returned from a curfew established the night before and had immediately began searching for our missing "Vikings." These personnel were still missing during early morning loadout but I had fortunately designated a small team to stay behind and continue our search. We departed on-schedule and by the time we touched down in Kuwait City, I had already received word that the three missing soldiers reappeared and were safely back on base. Although not too happy about the situation, I was relieved to reacquire accountability for these three that had been temporarily placed under my charge. A couple of days later, all our contingent had made it safely to our Special Operations area inside of Doha and we could now focus solely on our mission. Although we had temporarily lost accountability for three of our soldiers, our travel policy and practices were such that I was informed of this situation in very short order, and our organization possessed an exceptional capability to manage incidents. After all, we were a Company size element of Green Berets!

Travel policies and managing expectations. 

          Many corporate leaders that I have talked to over the past decade or so have time over, confirmed my assessment that companies prioritize cost and administrative processes for business travel among their employees over anything else. “Use X travel agency to book flights, travel authorizations require the signatures of X and Y, do not exceed X amount for lodging or meals, file travel summaries within X days of travel completion, submit receipts in the following manner, etc.,” are some of the more common travel policy requirements that I see. I have yet to see a corporate travel policy that requires supervisors to maintain accountability for their personnel who are traveling. Furthermore, I have rarely ever seen a company that is adequately prepared to respond immediately and appropriately upon learning that one or more of its traveling employees has become gravely ill, endangered, or missing. I have seen the leadership of large companies scrambling to find telephone numbers for emergency services in the foreign countries where traveling employees need immediate assistance. Sadly, I have also seen mid-level managers who deliberately fail to inform their bosses (corporate leadership) in a timely manager.

          For the traveler, I have seen many arrive in foreign countries who do not speak the local language, are oblivious to local laws and customs, have no sense of situational awareness, are uninformed of local threats, and are untrained in implementing the most basic yet sound personal protection measures. Nevertheless, it is the traveler who will call his or her supervisor when in need of immediate assistance and the traveler’s expectation is that his or her supervisor will assist.

          Essentially, safe corporate travel comes down to managing expectations between corporate leadership and the travelers. Thus, corporate travel policies should establish clear lines of communications and its capabilities to assist travelers should they fall ill, become endangered, or fail to respond. Equally important, corporations should develop a culture of trust so that travelers do not fear repercussions when calling their employers for assistance, even when such notifications result in false alarms. After all, a traveler may only have one opportunity to make it known that he or she needs assistance. Furthermore, corporate travel practices should incorporate the necessary means to better prepare its employees for travel abroad, especially to areas of elevated risk.

Duty of Care. 

Duty of care has become a rather popular catch phrase these days. Some business leaders understand the importance of this phrase better than others, but I regularly see corporate travel policies focused on cost, authorities, and administrative procedures. I see little, if anything written into policies that outline pre-travel preparation, accountability measures, communications requirements, or response procedures should travelers fall ill or become endangered. Yet companies can be held legally liable for their failure to adequately prepare, account for, support, and sufficiently respond to a distressed traveler. Therefore, it perplexes me somewhat to know that many companies with extremely large budgets unnecessarily place themselves and their brand names at risk by not implementing duty of care principles into their overall travel policies.

High Peak Global Consulting Notes.

If you would like to learn more about implementing appropriate “duty of care” verbiage into your existing travel policies or if you desire assistance to better ensure your company can account for travelers, manage expectations, and take immediate and appropriate actions on behalf of distressed travelers, we shall be more than pleased to share our experience and knowledge with you! If you are interested in working with us, we will commit to assisting you with developing strategies aimed at preventing incidents from occurring altogether while also better preparing your leaders to functionally respond when “things go south” for personnel on official travel.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I certainly appreciate your interest and support!