What 9/11 Taught Me

During the height of the 9/11 attacks, my then supervisor/president contacted me from the other side of the world.  His three words to me, "find our people."  An international company, we had people that traveled 80%+ of the time and their safety was always of significant importance to us.  At that time, traveling on the domestic front, we had people in New York, North Carolina and Massachusetts. 

 

As an employer, we are responsible for the safety of a traveling employee.  Employees who travel for international business are exposed to risks above and beyond those experienced in domestic travel.   (In a USA April, 2012 report, in 2011 International SOS and its partner, Control Risks, evacuated more people - 3,052 - for security reasons than the U.S. State Department. The two firms evacuated 1,500 people from Libya, 1,250 from Egypt, 149 from Tunisia, 127 from Bahrain and 26 from Japan. The State Department says it assisted more than 2,800 who evacuated foreign countries in 2011 and 16,700 in 2010. The State Department, which charges for its evacuations, says it charters transportation when commercial transportation isn't available but "encourages people to prepare their own plans to depart unstable or dangerous situations.")

When your employees travel, do you know where they all are?  Do you have their schedules?  Do you have a way to locate them?  Do you have a way to contact them?  While we cannot eliminate all the risks, there are steps we can take to ensure the safety of our employees when they travel: 

1. Ensure you have a copy of the employees travel itinerary so that you can monitor his/her progress.  Have their meeting schedule and all appropriate contact information.
2. For international travel, have the employee contact the US Embassy at their location.
3. Arrange for periodic check-ins on a regular basis.  If the employee fails to call in, this is a prompt for you to follow up.
4. Maintain a travel roster outlining employee travel schedules and contact information.  Ensure that contact times/dates are tracked.
5. Alternatively, have a dedicated travel website where the employee can advise of their safe arrival at the destination as well as allow for daily self-report.  The same website can provide employees with updated alerts/safety information.   It can generate alerts to the employer of missing self-reports, or travel rosters for all company employees.

What did the events of 9/11 teach me?   My lesson was that it's all about communication.  At a time when I needed to quickly ascertain the location of traveling employees, processes I had put in place served their purpose.