By John Proctor

We call them ‘human resources’ but how much effort do we put towards protecting those resources, and what issues and liabilities does the company face if we don’t? In an ideal world our personnel will travel abroad to their overseas workplace, conduct the work or task assigned to them and return without any trouble. However, in our increasingly volatile world the risk of something happening during travel is rising.

As a human resource professional, any incident involving your company’s personnel may impact you, and in some organizations, management of the entire event may be your responsibility. As such, there are some things you may wish to consider:

Planning

• Do you have corporate policies and directives for dealing with incidents, including ‘worst case’ scenarios?
• Have you established and practiced corporate and local response plans for an incident?
• Do you have family support plans in place?
• Have you had a legal review of your liability?

Preparation

• Have you done a risk assessment to assist you in determining the amount of preparation required (i.e., if your traveller is going to Europe they need less preparation than someone going to Venezuela, Nigeria, Mexico, Pakistan or India – the top 5 countries for kidnapping in 2009)?
• Do you have education and training for travellers and incident managers?
• Do you have a system/process to track overseas travel and support a response plan?

Prevention

• Do you have systems to notify travellers of impending or current events (i.e., natural disasters, disputed elections, epidemics or pandemics)?
• Do you have a system to confirm that preparatory steps, such as inoculations, have been completed before departure?
• Do you have individual and organizational protective security procedures?

Response

• Do you have corporate response plans on the shelf, given that any incident can make it to YouTube and the media in as little as 2 hours?
• Do you have media response plans in place?
• Do you have the ability to protect the family and the company from the media fallout over the event?
• What is your knowledge of the government system that will respond?

These questions merely scratch the surface of what ought to be considered in terms of safe employee travel. While answering them, you will need to ensure that any system you develop is in sync with both DFAIT and the RCMP, who are responsible for dealing with such international incidents.

If you decide to look for external help when answering these questions, find companies that have formal qualifications, and ask about their links to and understanding of the Federal response program. Just because they are ex-military or ex-police doesn’t necessarily qualify them as experts.

If we send human resources abroad, claiming that ‘our people are our greatest asset,’ then we need to actively demonstrate that we stand behind that claim. Even if the chance of something going wrong is low, the individual, professional and organizational impact of an event can be catastrophic.  In legal terms, you need to ask yourself whether what you have done to prepare your personnel could be considered ‘reasonable.’

John Proctor is one of the leading experts in human risk and travel risk management in Canada and is recognized internationally in this capacity. He has been responsible for the development of all the federal captivity survival programs currently in use in Canada today. He initiated and designed the only captivity survival instructor’s course in Canada and has also actively supported and advised a number of government departments on recent Canadian captivity incidents. John has 22 years experience in the British and Canadian forces. He is a qualified Intelligence Officer, HUMINT operator, Hostage/Crisis Negotiator and has served as aircrew flying helicopters in the Royal Navy and spent six years working with Canadian Special Forces in a variety of roles including head of Human Intelligence. He is a trained negotiator, qualified legal mediator and a behavioural consultant. John is currently vice president of Integrated Human Risk Solutions (iHRS), based in Ottawa.