By Dr. Daniel Diermeier, IBM Professor of Regulation and Competitive Practice, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. This article was produced in partnership with On Call International.
In September 2013, Islamic militants entered an upscale Nairobi shopping mall with assault guns and other weapons. Over the next two days, they killed nearly 70 people and injured many others; at the time of this writing, dozens were still missing as Kenyan authorities searched the mall’s rubble. Among the confirmed dead were a Canadian diplomat, three Britons, two French women, and a prominent Ghanaian poet. 1
In large-scale attacks, natural disasters, or accidents, many of those killed or injured are foreign citizens. And in many cases, these individuals are in the region representing corporate, educational, non-profit, or other organizational interests, often without protection of any kind, unless they have made personal arrangements for their safety. The lack of protection leaves them, their families, and their organizations vulnerable to further damage, whether financial (emergency medical evacuation expenses, for example), legal (potential lawsuits against an organization for inadequate protection), personnel-related (diminished employee morale/satisfaction), or reputational (diminished public perception of a company for failing to protect employees).
Adequate protection for travelers and expatriates is key to urgent and unexpected situations of any scale.
Consider several recent examples:
- In March 2010, a university student was killed and three others were injured when their car rolled over on a New Mexico highway. One of the victims, an international student from China, suffered traumatic brain damage and other internal injuries. Immediately after the accident, no one knew where the injured students and the deceased’s body had been taken.
- In mid-2012, a European traveler was returning from a business trip to India when he suffered a heart attack and stroke. As part of a cost-savings initiative, his company was requiring all travelers to fly economy class and had recently canceled its emergency medical services contract.
- During the January 2011 civil unrest in Egypt, many foreigners were caught in the violent protests that started in Cairo and spread quickly to other cities and regions. Among those in need were 35 students and faculty members from two US-based universities requiring safe evacuation from a city near Cairo. The group was too large to arrange passage through normal air travel.
These and many other recent incidents highlight the growing need to make protection of traveling employees a priority. Potential risks include and go well beyond those noted in the examples above:
- Accidents (transportation-related, falls)
- Medical issues (heart attacks, diabetes complications, poisoning)
- Civil unrest (riots, coups)
- War (global, civil) and other military actions
- Terrorism
- Crimes (theft, assault, kidnapping)
- Natural disasters (tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, floods)
- Fires
- Imprisonment
- Infectious disease (malaria, influenza)
- Air quality
How corporations and other organizations protect--or fail to protect--their employees abroad can have far-reaching implications for both the individuals and their organizations. It’s a growing concern based on several factors. First, due to ongoing globalization, a brighter post-downturn economy, and strong corporate profits, the rates of business travel are rising, with a 4.3 percent increase expected for US corporate spending in this area in 2013.
2 A significant portion of that spending will be allocated to sending people outside their home countries. The World Health Organization reports that more than 900 million international trips are taken annually.
3 Many of these represent the travels of members of businesses, non-profits, or non-governmental organizations. Similarly, the number of university students studying abroad has also risen, with a 4 percent increase in 2011, for example.
4 Among the most popular destinations for overseas study are China and India, which are developing countries with complex and potentially insufficient infrastructure and healthcare facilities for foreigners to navigate.
Second, travel of any kind poses significant risk of physical harm. For example, in 2010, an estimated 25,000 travelers were killed in road accidents overseas; that figure has been predicted to rise to as much as 75,000 annually by 2030.
5 Research shows that travelers bear a disproportionate burden of risk of illness, injury, and death in any given country.
6 About 50 million people travel to developing (higher risk) regions annually, and about 8 percent of them (4 million people) become ill enough to seek medical attention overseas or at home.
7
Finally, companies and other organizations are increasingly viewed as responsible for their travelers’ welfare. Given today’s intensity of media coverage, any event associated with a company’s perceived failure to protect its people not only has direct financial implications, but also carries potentially damaging legal, people-related, and reputational risks. Such risks can become a crisis if companies have insufficient protection and emergency response capabilities in place.
This changing environment also presents both challenges and opportunities for organizations with regard to traveler protection. Unfortunately, many organizational leaders still see such protection as a “nice-to-have” or an afterthought, rather than an effective and necessary risk-management tool. Not surprisingly, travel-related incidents are thus handled in a reactive fashion, with little foresight or proactive mind-set, which ultimately increases the risk of damage in the wake of a negative event.
1 Heidi Vogt, “Assault on Mall Stuns Kenya,” The Wall Street Journal, September 23, 2013; accessed September 26, 2013
2 Global Business Trade Association, “Latest GBTA Travel Report Finds That U.S. Business Travel Should Continue Its Steady Rise,” GBTA Website, July 2, 2013; retrieved November 11, 2013
3 World Health Organization, “International Travel and Health”; retrieved December 17, 2013
4 Institute of International Education, “Fall Survey Data: U.S. Campuses Report that Study Abroad is Rising,” November 14, 2011; retrieved September 27, 2013
5 Make Roads Safe (The Campaign for Global Road Safety) and FIA Foundation for the Automobile and Society, “Bad Trips: International Tourism and Road Trips in the Developing World,” September 2010; retrieved December 16, 2013
6 DJ Tonellato, CE Guse, and SW Hargarten, “Injury Deaths of US Citizens Abroad: New Data Source, Old Travel Problem,” Journal of Travel Medicine, 2009 Sep-Oct, 16(5):304-10.
7 David Freeman, “Travel Epidemiology,” CDC Health Information for International Travel 2014 (Yellow Book); retrieved December 16, 2013
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