Travel risk management: Protecting your employees in a turbulent world

Travel risk management has evolved from a nice-to-have into a business-critical function for UK organisations and employers worldwide. With business travel back to post-pandemic levels and the world experiencing different turbulences, employers face a complicated travel risk landscape that impacts both employee safety and business continuity.

Flooding in Spain, war in Ukraine, wildfires in Greece, political unrest around the world – these are just a few crises that have taken over media headlines over the past two years. The diversity of threats and geographical distribution means there are no "safe" destinations to travel to anymore. Employers must ensure comprehensive travel risk management mechanisms wherever their employees travel for work.

This guide will walk you through implementing effective corporate travel risk management, from initial risk assessment through to ongoing monitoring. Whether you're building your first programme or enhancing existing processes, you'll find practical frameworks, compliance guidance, and technology recommendations to protect your most valuable assets – your people.

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What is travel risk management?

Travel risk management is a set of coordinated activities to manage and control an organisation's approach to travel-related risks. This includes medical emergencies, political instability, cybersecurity threats, natural disasters, and more.

Business travel risk management is about understanding what your program is and putting a framework around that to enable your travelers to travel safely. Most organisations currently have a good framework around travel risk management for high-risk destinations – tools, processes and stakeholders involved that ensure employee safety.

Yet, when it comes to more frequent low-risk country trips, where emergencies can still happen, organisations are not dealing with those properly. They don't track it, don't know about the emergencies, and lack proper protocols.

Modern business travel risk management consists of real-time threat monitoring, detailed pre-travel planning, and systematic response protocols to ensure employees remain productive and secure wherever business takes them. More and more often, companies adopt travel risk management solutions like WorkFlex to ensure thorough and tech-enabled travel risk pre-assessment, risk mitigation, as well as emergency support in case of crisis.

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Why UK businesses can't afford to ignore travel risk management

The business case for thorough travel risk management solutions has never been stronger. A recent Opinium survey, commissioned by World Travel Protection, reveals that

60% of UK business travellers believe business travel has become riskier, with 43% now less willing to travel for work.

Travellers' biggest concerns for 2025 were travel disruption and delays, losing vital personal possessions, exposure to crime, cybersecurity threats and geopolitical instability. Health problems were also high up on the list, with over half of respondents fearing a medical emergency abroad and a similar percentage reporting mental health issues like anxiety or depression.

Meanwhile, employers have duty of care obligations under the UK law. In simple terms, duty of care means employers must take reasonable steps to protect employees' health, safety, and well-being. When it comes to business travel, safety must be ensured on the move, which makes things more complicated than in a static office or home office environment. The ISO 31030 travel risk management standard was introduced a few years ago and provides a clear framework for employers in this topic. We explore it in the next section.

Besides duty of care obligations, the cost of inadequate corporate travel risk management directly impacts your employees. Beyond potential legal liabilities, costs from medical emergencies, evacuation expenses, and business disruption, employee morale, health and safety matter most. A comprehensive travel risk assessment programme typically pays for itself through protected employees, avoided incidents, as well as financial benefits like reduced insurance premiums and no business disruptions.

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Understanding travel risk management fundamentals

Travelling is a common part of different job roles nowadays. Since people travel for business overseas, employers face a necessity to meet their duty of care obligations across different geographies.

During travel, employees can become part of different risky situations, like traffic accidents, natural disasters, terrorism, theft and crime, cyber threats, epidemics, political instability, and more. All of these risk factors can negatively impact their health, safety, wellbeing and travel objectives.

Travel risk management requires that employers assess the probability of risky events, develop risk response activities and communicate about the potential threats to the travellers. It's essential to advise and provide travellers with adequate medical and security guidance, assistance, and advice.
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ISO 31030:2021 standard - The new compliance framework

The concept of employer's duty of care has been around forever, but there was nothing companies could use to measure themselves against. The ISO 31030 standard, released in 2021, is a best practice framework that helps organisations evaluate and manage their travel risks effectively. It covers policy development, programme implementation, threat identification, risk assessment and prevention strategies. It will improve employee confidence in travel-related health, safety and security arrangements.

Historically, travel policies had been written with the "risk takers" in mind – executives, management, etc. As the people who travel for work have become more diverse over the years, travel policies haven't followed the highly individualised needs these different traveller profiles could require. ISO 31030 gives guidance on how to adjust your travel risk management to account for the diversity of your people.

💡 Learn more about the ISO 31030 standard here.

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