A Guide To Improving Your CQC Rating by Radar Healthcare (RH022).pdf
Moving To An Integrated Traveller Risk Mngnt Program Isos Conference 2010
1. Managing the Risks of A Global Workforce 2010 Conference Series Moving to an integrated Traveller Risk Management Program Damon Rapke Procurement Category Manager
15. Global Destinations Korea Bangladesh Southern China China - Beijing China - Shanghai United Kingdom China -Taiping Vietnam Pakistan Philippines Thailand Malaysia Indonesia Fiji New Zealand Australia
48. ISOS Member CardProcurement audits daily ATA non-compliance reports. Non compliant travellers chased. Traveller MUST read & acknowledge Advisory Traveller departs and contacts ISOS for any en route assistance Traveller returns. Medical history avail for follow-up treatment. ISOS works with our Insurer where necessary
Pacific Brands is a marketer and manufacturer of a range of brands across Underwear, streetwear, workwear, sporting goods, footwear and bedding businesses. Our brands include Bonds, Berlei, Mossimo, Volley, Slazenger, Yakka, KingGee, Grosby, Hush Puppies, Sleepmaker and Sheridan.7,000 employees, across 7 countriesWe lead a Travel Group which includes 9 other ex-PDL companies incl Ansell, Olex, Repco, L&H Group, Goodyear 400 international travellers and 15 expats
PriorThe medical side was highly dependent on our Medical Director and his nursing staff who advised on medical risks using ISOS, smarttraveller and other resources as reference tools, he personally conducted or arranged external medical checks which included advice on vaccinations and other health requirements. PB also provided travel kits to all travellers. Sadly, our pre-travel safety preparation of travellers was negligible. A belief existed that travellers were generally experienced, regularly visited these places and knew how to find information if they needed it. On request, they would be directed to smarttraveller or our TMC for further advice. There was NO formal pre-travel process. We used static, although daily, pre-travel reports to track employees movements. En RouteIf in a hotel, for minor matters, travellers generally arranged a doctor via the Front Desk. Alternatively, they’d call back to Aust for advice from the Medical Director.A good service was also provided by our Insurer via their Assist provider. However, in the past 9 years, luckily we’ve had little more than the odd travel sickness, broken limb and robberies to deal with so this arrangement coped fine with this. On ReturnOur Medical Director or the traveller’s own doctor would provide post-travel follow up.Given how extraordinarily lucky we’d been, there was no impetus for change.
After our Medical Director retired in Oct last year, the whole subject of traveller risk needed immediate re-assessment.We quickly recognised that both the company and our travellers were exposed – we had to provide timely, accurate pre-travel preparationIt was not acceptable to presume people would do their own research and reach informed decisions relating to their safety and medical well-being. We couldn’t be confident that ANY traveller would be properly prepped before departure under this scenario.As David Lane, GM Isos, wrote in the BTM Yearbook, ‘The key to providing adequate duty of care is to demonstrate that steps have been taken to identify and assess all foreseeable risks and negate these through a comprehensive risk management strategy’. Whilst PB does a good job of securing the safety of workers in our offices, DCs and manufacturing plants, we were sure we were NOT doing as well to secure the safety of travellers & expats in the global workplace. 911, Madrid & London proved events could happen anywhere in the First World let alone in Mumbai, Bali, Jakarta, Pakistan, etc. Our en-route assistance was entirely reactive. It was incapable of mass messaging travellers & we couldn’t do it either. Was it capable of handling a major health emergency or only minor issues which it did well? It had never been stress-tested. We saw a need for a Help Desk, that is, the ISOS Alarm Centres to take calls from our employees - similar to what we operate for IT, Mobile Communications & Employee Services Expats and their families needs were not fully addressed – we couldn’t guarantee access to proper medical clinics and advice. We liked the idea of a one stop Security * Medical * Travel info Portal required to consolidate the proposed changeAnother reason to re-think our strategy was that travellers would tell me they were unsure over who to contact in an emergency – the company, the insurer, their partners, me? We didn’t have a single point of ‘help’ We had no access to real time traveller tracking and of course, no audit trail to confirm that travellers were properly prepared or vaccinated for their travel. We did care however the current procedures were simply inadequate. We recognised that we had: Long underestimated the risks , our employees had underestimated the risks and the challenge of staying up to date with all the information was simply beyond us.
Faced with the facts, our legal counsel quickly confirmed we needed to upgrade the care provided to our employees before, during and post travel.A sourcing project found that International SOS would be a good match for our needs. Other Risk providers and TMCs offered bits of the puzzle but not a total integrated solution ISOS presented a commercial response to our local, expat and partner companies for comprehensive coverageProcurement presented a Business Case to the SLT which was quickly approvedAll Partner companies fully embraced the new opportunity and under a single program receive the same services as Pacific BrandsImplementation commenced late Oct and the program went live early December, 2009
This is a look at the Portal page – many of you would have your own I suspect.On the right hand side, are the links to Alerts, Medical information, general travel information and security reports.The all-important Membership Card can also be printed from this page fro those who don’t have the actual plastic.
We now provide comprehensive Pre-travel preparation of all our travellers irrespective of where they are located, automatically delivered to their email Inbox within minutes of booking. This includes advice on security, medical, business etiquette, even local public holidays and general travel tips.Whatever our risk profile was earlier, this improved pre-travel preparation has lowered overall travel risks to both travellers and Pacific Brands. We now have 24x7 access not only for Emergency but also non-emergency assistance, available via informed Alarm Centres before, during and after travel.We’ve greatly enhanced our En Route support to travellers. Obviously, travellers can obtain quality post-event assistance however we are now capable of taking a proactive approach to security and medical alerts. The Traveltracker system allows us to SMS or email travellers, individually or in bulk, very quickly so we can communicate medical or security alerts as soon as they occur.The program provides targeted advice for business travellers so it’s complementary to the smartravellerwebsite which provides advice to all travellers, not specifically business travellers. As mentioned, we still require travellers to register their details on DFATThe feedback has been very positive – travellers have told me they feel better cared for and have a clear direction of what they need to do to be travel – ready and compliant. There is a realisation that one’s safety is a joint responsibility with employees having a role to play in this too.We’ve separated the roles of the Insurer and Assistance. We are still working through this and wouldn’t be surprised to encounter the odd claims issue as each party may have different drivers when responding to a situation.We’ve gained control over the travel risk process. We have real time tracking of our travellers, daily reporting of Non-Compliance and Acknowledgement of pre-travel preparation and a suite of other valuable reports to use to manage our travel.
In conclusion, this project has been of significant value to PB, its employees and expat community.The Program has been well received by travellers and travel arrangers and strongly endorsed by management. It’s been relatively easy to implement although the compliance auditing is time consuming although very necessary if you want to re-train travellers to take their safety seriously.It is vital that organisations have a risk management system in place to protect the organisation as much as its travellersIn the future, I would like to see automated, pulsing non-compliance reporting as this would eliminate the manual follow up we’re doing currently. The ability to re-send travel advisories would also be useful to counter the argument – I didn’t receive it! I understand this capability is not far away.Next steps – we recognise there is still a major gap to close to ensure our people are properly assessed at ‘fit to travel’ . Consequently, we are working with ISOS on a global Health Check & Vaccination program to include annual medicals for senior staff, pre and post deployment medicals for travellers as well as an online, medical records database, globally accessible in case of emergency. Thank you for your interest in this subject and I hope this presentation has been useful to those contemplating a similar program.
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