Hybrid working has changed how we think about travel. Staff now move between home, offices, client sites, and co-working spaces far more flexibly than before.
Recruitment is no longer confined by geography either, which often means longer commutes and more frequent trips. The line between “commuting”, “remote working” and “business travel” has blurred, and with it the risks that organisations need to consider.
This shift brings fresh opportunities for businesses, but it also introduces new layers of risk. Whether it’s a short train journey to a co-working hub or a long-haul flight to meet clients, every stage of travel exposes staff to potential threats. Organisations that want to keep their people safe must now think beyond the airport terminal and apply a comprehensive approach to all forms of travel.
The question is no longer just “How do we protect staff abroad?” but rather “How do we protect staff whenever they’re on the move?”
What counts as travel?
First, let’s define ‘travel’, or break it down into constituent parts. The UK National Travel Survey identifies:
- ‘Commuting’ – Any trip from home to work, or from work to home.
- ‘Trips’ – Travel made in the course of work to reach a destination.
For hybrid workers, it’s rarely that clear-cut. A regular train ride to a co-working hub looks like a commute. A long drive to see a client feels more like a trip. Both involve exposure and both need managing.
Human nature
A security manager’s role is not only to assess risks but to understand human behaviour. John Locke, in Book IV of his work of 1689, suggested that ‘ideas’ and ‘perceptions’ are the two ways in which humans derive understanding. As all students of human nature will recognise, people will, like water, find the easiest way – usually bypassing controls implemented to protect them.
Recognising these concepts, it is critical that any processes designed to protect a team when travelling either nationally, internationally, or locally, are designed in a way that is understood by the team and are easy to adhere to. Cultural change is difficult to implement but, with the support of staff members, becomes easier to achieve.
Preparation and risk appetite
Prevention is preferable to remediation, and significantly preferable to repatriation. Therefore, the preparation for any travel should begin with a risk assessment, paying particular attention to the individual team members and their own risk appetite when compared to that of the organisation. For essential travel, with a team with a low risk appetite, significant measures may have to be implemented to provide assurance and reduce risk, such as the inclusion of a security advisor or protective security team.
Individuals must be made aware of the risks that are being considered prior to travel. Depending on the task and destination, the travel-risk management process may need to incorporate a full country threat-and-risk-assessment (TARA), allocating an overall risk to the destination and comparing it against the risk appetite of both the organisation and of the travellers.
In some cases, it may be that the task, destination, or team composition must be altered in order to allow the effective completion of a task. For more complicated travel, a pre-deployment briefing may be necessary; these can only be undertaken once the risk assessment process is complete, and mitigation measures are in place.
Businesses often focus solely on trips that involve the use of a passport for risk-management and travel planning, but much travel may be national and not international. Many of the procedures put in place for overseas travel are equally relevant to local and national travel, particularly when work involves sensitive people or projects.
Leveraging technology to automate many of the required tasks removes the friction for travellers, operations staff, and managers. Considering most communication during travel revolves around departures and arrivals, the use of tracking hardware, apps, or software can automate this process. Geofencing locations enables operations room staff to quickly establish the location of teams, team members, and vehicles, preventing ‘notification fatigue’ and reducing the likelihood of a crucial notification being overlooked.
Training and awareness
Hostile environment awareness training teaches the importance of reducing one’s profile and practicing good situational awareness. Where possible, organisations can assist with this by ensuring that teams do not need to raise their profile when travelling, such as needing to procure SIM cards, cash, or vehicles when travelling, thereby having to provide various identity documents in various locations. Providing travellers with access to reliable electronic payment methods, eSIMs, and either a local driver or ride-sharing platform prevents exposure of team members to possible data loss or identity theft.
The single most important way of preventing your team from being exposed to physical threats is training them to recognise the signs of a gathering storm and remove themselves from the potential threat before it materialises. Most of our communication is non-verbal and, no matter what the environment, we are all able, to various degrees, to read a situation.
Travelling in pairs increases the chance of a threat being detected and ensures that, should an adverse event befall one party, the other is able to report and support prior to recovery.
What organisations should do
Organisations wishing to support teams when travelling should:
- Conduct a full risk assessment incorporating task, situation, destination, travellers, and team composition.
- Compare risk assessments against organisational and individual risk appetites.
- Mitigate risk by adjusting task, team composition, or destination, in order to meet the risk appetite thresholds.
- Consider training as being a key part of risk mitigation strategies.
- Implement ways to reduce arrival frictions such as providing communication, travel, and payment solutions to travellers.
- Ensure a robust check-in procedure is place and automate where appropriate.
- Debrief travellers and create an organisational lessons learnt for the destination.
Final thoughts
While international trips often dominate the conversation around travel risk, the truth is that most employee journeys happen closer to home and those bring their own vulnerabilities. Overlooking commutes or domestic travel can create blind spots, especially when staff are working on sensitive projects or moving between unfamiliar locations.
For security managers, the challenge is to resist complacency around the “everyday” and give equal weight to the routine as to the exceptional. Protecting people on the move isn’t just about frameworks and policies; it’s about ensuring individuals are trained, equipped, and confident enough to apply those protections in real time.
Ultimately, safeguarding your team during travel means shifting perspective: travel risk management doesn’t begin when the passport comes out it begins the moment an employee leaves their front door.
If you want help protecting your team wherever they travel, get in touch with us today to find out how we can support you.