[00:00:08] Speaker A: Hi, and welcome to this episode of Your Window Seat, where we at Travel Incorporated discuss the topics that matter most in this ever changing business travel industry. I'm Tracy Carillo, your host for today's topic, traveler safety. Whose role is it anyway?
Over the past few years, traveler safety and security has taken on an entirely new dimension of focus as, let's face it, your company's greatest assets are your people.
None of us know what may be around the corner or how your employees may be impacted while traveling for your business. So in today's discussion, we're diving into who is really responsible for traveler safety and how each of our listeners can build an effective duty of care program for any size organization. Our special guest today is Lisa Simpson, travel and Card services specialist for J m. Huber. She's received her Certificate of Corporate Travel Execution and recently was the recipient of the GBTA 2023 Business Travel Service Award. Lisa. Welcome to your window seat.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Thank you, Tracy. It's nice to be here.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Let's start by talking about you and your day to day role at JM Huber, and if you could share a bit about the size and global makeup of your travel program.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: Sure. So I'm responsible for the day to day operations of our travel program and our card services. We have approximately 2100 profile travelers and arrangers, with approximately 1350 of those being US based or North America based, and the rest spread throughout Europe and Asia. Our travel typically is about a 60 40 split, domestic and international.
We have employees and locations throughout the Americas, throughout Europe, throughout Asia, so we have point of sale in all of those locations and travel to and from all of them as well.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: And how long have you been at JM Huber?
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Next month I will celebrate 20 years in this role.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: Wow, that's quite an accomplishment as you work with a broad level of exposure. So given your company's locations around the world, let's definitely start with a viewpoint of a larger company's approach and specifically how you incorporated safety into your travel policy.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: So I'm very fortunate that one of the guiding principles in my company is safety. For almost the full 20 years, I've been asking about knowing where our travelers are, knowing how to have the capability to get in touch with them, and it's taken a back burner for a number of years. But as our travel program grew, it became more and more evident that we needed this. I was invited to join our incident response team as well as our Atlanta headquarters safety committee, and through those made the connections and have started working very closely with our chief risk officer, who also sees the necessity of having this type of capability and oversight so that we can provide the necessary services to our travelers. So by becoming part of those teams, and they're cross functional teams, we've got people from corporate risk, we've got HR, we've got legal procurement, just a wide array of employees on those committees. So I worked with them to get approval. And at that point we went to Bid looking at third party risk assessment companies that we could partner with. So that not only could we track our travelers, but we could provide them with pertinent information, we could provide them with Itinerary based country risk assessments, we could provide them with guidance, we could provide a contact number 24 hours a day. We looked at several of the organizations there and there are several, they've changed a lot over the years. They provide a wide array of services.
So we settled on the company that we felt best met our needs, incorporating and working with us to be able to map to our insurance provider, to be able to map to operations call centers where we could have regionally located boots on the ground kind of information available at our fingertips.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: So you mentioned this third party risk assessment company. So this would be similar to an international SOS, for example, whereby your travel management company, in our case Travel Incorporated, forwards booking data feeds to them so they can integrate into the travel tracking tools that they utilize. Now, for some companies, the TMC's duty of care programs may be sufficient, but it sounded in your case that it was not that you needed an expanded boots on the ground to use your words on this one. Can you give a little bit more insight into what type of services you needed in region for your travelers?
[00:05:18] Speaker B: So, when we were looking at this, we wanted someone who had the local or regional resources, knew the culture, knew real time what was happening, not relying on news briefs and reports to give us those assessments. And while our TMCs have been great over the years of providing us with traveler data, they don't necessarily have that real time what's happening data, those global situations. So we felt like we really needed real time data. We travel into some very interesting locations. Some of them are very remote, some of them have a higher risk factor than what other people may travel to. So we felt like we needed a company that had the capability of providing us with fast, accurate, up to the minute information.
We needed a company that could partner with us in being able to provide itinerary based information. They could accept that feed from Travel Incorporated and then they could provide and send out automatic notifications to our travelers. They provide us with a mechanism where I can look at a matter of seconds and see who I have where for any time period past, present or future based on booking information. It also incorporates the actual travel data to know where they've landed, what hotel they're in, what specific pinpoint little neighborhood almost, that they are in. We are able to communicate with them. We felt like a good two way communication mechanism was vital to our program. It's great to know where people are, but if you can't communicate with them and they can't communicate with you, it doesn't help very much. So that was very important to us.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: Fabulous. So it really is. That information and service and support beyond the traveler tracking, that medical assistance, that extraction assistance, for example, that you may need, that goes beyond that traveler tracking information. So do you want to give them a plug? Who is your partner? And can you share with us a couple of examples, both domestically where you utilized their services to assist you in an emergency as well as internationally?
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Sure. So as I said, we spoke with just about everybody in the market and we landed on Helix International. They provided for us a very nice scalable program that met our needs. We weren't too small for them, we weren't too big for them. So it's been a very good fit over the last few years and we've really enjoyed working with them. One of the great things about them is that not only do we have the web based information or platform, but we also have a mobile application. Recently we had a traveler that was en route from Europe to Peru when there was an attempted government coup. And because she was mid flight, normally we wouldn't have a way to get her information. We were able to work with Helix to get up to the minute what was happening on the ground before it was hitting the news channels so we could offer her guidance. We were sending her communications via the mobile app and via text messaging, so that when she turned her phone on, she was getting those text alerts. If she had on her airplane mode WiFi, she was getting those SMS alerts. So she knew not to leave the airport to get on the next flight out and to do a two way check in with us to let us know she was safe. Some of the more domestic situations we've had a few years ago, we were in the process of implementing Helix, so we did not unfortunately have them at our disposal yet, but it helped prove our case for needing them. When I was at a conference and I received a call from HR saying, hey, we can't find this employee. He's supposed to be at our plant in Texas. He didn't show up. So we reached out to the hotels, we reached out, they were checking hospitals and police departments. And I reached out to the car rental company and said, hey, do you have tracking on the vehicles? Can you help us with this in any way? We ended up, after a relatively short period of time, being able to track the employee down. He had decided he no longer wanted to work for us. He just didn't bother to tell anybody. So we were able to get him back home and then let him end that employment with us, but it went to prove the point of how important it is to work with our preferred vendors. If he had not been renting from a preferred vendor, if he had not been staying at a preferred property, we would have had fewer resources at our disposal that were able to give us information. If we had not had his trip booked in our program, we wouldn't have even had a starting place. It just really solidified the need for having a managed program and within that program, having some framework that incorporates your safety and duty of care program.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Right. I think a lot of companies feel that third party risk assessment organizations are really only for those that have point of sale outside of the US. And there are a number of instances, as we all know, where they can provide incredible value, whether it's medical assistance or otherwise here locally.
So let's shift a little bit to your policy. How often do you review it? Who is involved in reviewing it specifically when it comes to safety, security and duty of care?
[00:10:58] Speaker B: So we review our policy every three years.
However, we understand that it's a living, breathing document and that things may come up change in the ever changing world of travel and risk that may require us to update the policy more frequently. But we do an official review every three years and that review is completed by a cross functional team, including risk, HR, legal, finance, procurement. Our chief risk officer has someone from his group as well as our risk department that manages our corporate insurances. So all of those groups are represented so that we try to make sure that we are addressing all areas that need to be covered.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: You bringing out that point about even including your corporate insurance. I mean, the tangents and all of the different stakeholders can really be a lot of people, not only in the forming of the program, but in the review of the program. So let me ask you this in the event that there is a catastrophic event, how do you work within that group, that committee, your third party risk assessment, to not only communicate but mobilize in that situation?
[00:12:25] Speaker B: So we've been very fortunate that we have very defined roles in the event of a catastrophic incident. We have 1st, second and third point of contact so that someone is always reachable. We have that not only from the travel side, but from our corporate communication side, our HR side, and our legal side. And our corporate risk rolls in with me on this one on the travel side, so that we are quickly and effortlessly able to mobilize. We have someone whose main responsibility is to deal with any media. We have someone whose main responsibility is to deal with the TMC and the travel suppliers. We have someone whose main responsibility is to work with Helix and any other third party risk companies that we happen to be working with. We have someone whose main responsibility is to work with our insurance providers so that we are all able to focus on our specialties, making sure those areas are covered, but being in constant communication with one another to make sure we have all bases covered. We know where our travelers or our employees are. It doesn't necessarily have to be a traveler. If something were to happen at one of our plant sites, we would utilize the same resources, we would utilize the same framework. So we work very closely together and we review our plan of operation relatively frequently, but we definitely built that framework in.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: Excellent. Wow, that really sounds like you have the right team of people. Everybody understands their unique role and it really is about ensuring that they are in place when and if they ever have to be called for these kind of situations.
So let's move a little bit more into a small or mid size organization, a travel program whereby maybe the procurement manager doesn't have the luxury of the resources or nearly the breadth of the committee opportunities or even a risk management division in place. At this point, what would be your recommendation as a mentor to them as to what the imperatives are that they need to put into place to get started or to redesign their existing program?
[00:14:38] Speaker B: So I would say first and foremost, you have to have visibility into where your travelers are. If you don't know where you have people when something happens, you can't take action. So visibility and real time data, your TMC is great for that. You don't have to have that big third party company. Obviously you can reach out to your TMC. They have a lot of risk management tools in place that you can utilize. Whichever mechanism you use, make sure you know where your travelers are. Even if you don't have a managed program, there are tools you can put in place so that you can aggregate that data and have that visible to you. So that would be first and foremost, know where people are. You have to have good, reliable data. So again, this is where you're going to really partner with your TMC. Some credit card companies can also help you with that. But your TMC and your preferred travel suppliers are going to be key in this because they can give you that good data very quickly. And you need a communication method. If something does happen, how are you going to communicate to your travelers? Are they going to be able to communicate back to you? It could be phone calls and text and emails and that's okay, but you have to have something in place, ready to implement, ready to take action. One of the things that I recommend, we use the concur company notes to post a lot of pertinent information. We do regular trainings every month with all of our new travelers. We provide information on a global intranet site. So not only do we have these things in place, but we have them visible and accessible to our travelers and our travel arrangers.
Again, it doesn't take the big third party companies to do that, an internal SharePoint or just the company notes section somewhere where people know to go to get the information. But you've got to be communicating that to them up front and then you've got to be communicating during an actual event. To me, you've got to have visibility, you've got to have good data, and you've got to have a communication method in place.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: So I want to go back to that visibility into all bookings. For a lot of the small to mid sized organizations, they do a great job of Air compliance. So their policy compliance is really strong around air, but there is a little flexibility around those hotel bookings. What would you suggest to them? To try to encourage more of the hotels being booked through their preferred channels as part of the Duty of Care program, to emphasize the importance of that to their senior management, but most importantly, to be able to take care of their travelers.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: So what we do, and the way we really started this whole process years ago, was I can't help you if I don't know where you are. So not only do I want to ensure that you're having the best experience you can as a traveler, because let's face it, business travel is not a luxury. It can be tedious. You're away from home, you're away from your family. So I stress to my travelers, we're working with preferred vendors to get you in a nice, safe, efficient, comfortable hotel. We want you to use those whenever possible. And in the event that something happens, then I can reach out to them and work on your behalf to extend a stay, to make some changes to your reservation, to help dispute something if necessary. So help me help you not always taking it from the safety standpoint, but let me make this a better experience for you. So we approach it that way. It's about making them efficient, it's about making them comfortable and as an enjoyable an experience as it can be, obviously, while still being good stewards of the company money. But then we add on that and in the event that something should happen, this is what we're able to do. But we have to know where you are.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: So you hit on something that was exactly going on in my head as you were talking about this. You had talked about all of these different places where you can put information. You could put it on the company notes page, you can put it on your Internet. But in the event of emergency, let's say whether it's, I had a problem, there's a fire in my hotel. Whatever the situation is, it's wonderful for the travelers that they know that there's a program out there and there's a plan in place. But when the rubber hits the road and I'm in emergency and I'm stressing or panicking about a situation, how can we help those travel managers simplify the communication so the travelers have a single place of reference to go? What would be your recommendation for something like that? Making it as easy as possible for the traveler to find the information they need when they need it, at the time when they need it.
[00:19:34] Speaker B: Both, I would say if you can have a central place to provide your information, if you can have an intranet site where you can post that, link that back to your company note section in your booking tool. Most booking tools have a way to do that. Set up an easy way for them to communicate. People change roles. So rather than having everyone email me directly, they can email the travel department box and somebody's always going to get that. So I would say just try to simplify things for them. Make it simple, make it concise and make it easy to find.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Perfect. So from a small to mid size visibility into the travel bookings, try to enforce policy not just with air, but to your point with rental car and to your hotels. Have an easy communication path for two way communication so that they can find the information they need and they know that you'll be responsive back and then to have the data that validates all of that from your TMC. One element that really is critical that sometimes we just forget about is the importance of having that mobile phone number in your profiles. So if you have that two way communication that you have that mobile number that could be easily accessed, they be text, they could be the SMS messages, they can be whatever way you want to be communicating or they want to be communicated with. And to ensure that that is in each person's profile, would you agree with that?
[00:21:09] Speaker B: Absolutely. Not only is it a mandatory field in our traveler profile, it is a mandatory requirement to be issued a corporate credit card.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: Excellent. So when we were chatting before, you were telling me a lot of programs that go on within your organization for all employee traveler safety. Now we've been talking about duty of care programs and third party risk assessment partners and preferred partners from all of our different suppliers. But let's talk about those that are not just the profile travelers, those are that all of the employees within your organization and what you do to offer them additional assistance on their own personal health well being. But safety measures. Tell us a bit more about some of those programs that you've put in place. I think our listeners would really enjoy hearing about them. Sure.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: So safety, as I said, is one of our guiding principles. We want to have our employees safe whether they're at work, home, vacation, doesn't matter. We want them safe. They are important to us. As you said, they're our most valuable assets. So we have a very strong safety culture, providing a lot of safety that's basically enrichment type training. We encourage all of our employees, whether they travel or not, to attend a personal safety class that we host. We have a third party provider that does a proactive mindset situational awareness class. We have pepper spray training. We've done some self defense. We do defensive driving. We have advanced first aid, CPR, trauma care training. We provide fire extinguisher, training, all of these things that we try to incorporate so that as you're out doing your day to day, life not just traveling, but especially when you're traveling, we're just trying to raise awareness, so that if a situation arises, you've at least thought of it and hopefully have started formulating a plan of how you would react, what you would do. So with these trainings that we provide, it's yes. In the workplace, yes if you're on property, yes. When you're traveling, yes if you're at the mall, yes if you're on vacation. It can pertain to any of those. And we just try to keep safety and security at the forefront so that people don't become complacent, but so that they feel, I guess, empowered and informed, so that it's not, oh, my word, I never thought this could happen. What will I do? It's oh, yeah. Wait, let me pull that memory from when we talked about this, and this is how I'm going to react, and this is what I'm going to do.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: So it's not about being scared of what's around the corner. It's being mindful about where you are in your surroundings and enjoying that time, whether you are walking around your own block or you're in a foreign country and you're wanting to see the sights and to just really embrace the culture of that organization.
I came across a couple of personal tips a while back, and one of them that really stuck out to me was when women are traveling alone, being from the south here I live in San Antonio, Texas, you have the gentlemen that are always opening the door for you, and you're the first one off the elevator. You're the first one through the door. But what I came across was if you're a female traveler and you're alone in a hotel, instead of being the first one off the elevator, be the last one off the elevator. So someone is not following you to your room or seeing what hallway you're going down. What are some of the other tips that you might have? Because that one really caught my attention because I don't think of it. And it's something that if we are being mindful about our safety when traveling or just entering any business to visit, what are some of other suggestions, and how do you keep a regular dialogue with your employees about safety tips.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: So some of the other tips that we have, we get from Helix through their mobile app. For our travelers, they also provide some just generic traveler safety tips and guidance. Those are very helpful. We encourage people to review those. They update those periodically. But there's also things that I've picked up either from traveling or from blogs or from podcasts or articles. Make sure, if possible, that you're not walking alone, especially after dark, even in your hometown. That cannot be the safest thing to do. But especially if you're traveling or if you're in unfamiliar surroundings. For female travelers especially, try not to get those ground level rooms. You don't want to be on the first floor, and you don't want to be right off the lobby, right at the elevator where it's a high traffic area, because then it's harder to monitor who's coming and going by your room. We have a weekly safety tip that started years ago from our safety committee that I'm responsible for sending out. And it started out as workplace safety tips and has expanded to anything from personal safety to fire safety to travel safety. So the travel safety tips get incorporated in that rotation just to make people mindful, just to bring things to people's attention. Because a lot of times I have people tell me, I never would have thought about that until I saw that, or, hey, I was on a trip recently, and you'll never believe this happened, and I remembered your safety tip on that. So we try to keep it visible. We try to keep it in that rotation, as well as through signage around the office, through our newsletters, things like that.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: That's perfect. Lisa, I can't thank you enough for sharing all of these points today. Our employees really are our greatest asset. And when it comes to whose role is it to ensure an effective duty of care and safety program? Well, the answer really is all of us. And most importantly, you're not alone. So as always at Travel Incorporated, we're here to help guide you and support any matter that you have as you're developing or redesigning your duty of care program, whether it's safety, whether it's security, whether it's traveler tracking. Thank you, Lisa, so much. You are a wonderful partner to us here at Ti, and you are an incredible resource to all of our partners in the industry. We appreciate you being with us in your words of wisdom that you've shared with us today. And again, thank you for being here as our guest.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: Thank Tracy.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: And thanks to you for listening to this episode of Your Window Seat. To learn more about Travel Incorporated, go to our
[email protected] or follow us on LinkedIn.
We look forward to the next episode. And as always at Travel Incorporated, travel safe.
