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TRAVEL RISK MANAGEMENT 2015
CMI GROUPE
GAËTAN LEFÈVRE, Group Risk and Insurance Manager at CMI Groupe, President at BELRIM
Activity sector: Engineering in energy, defence, steel-making & other industrials
Private company
Head office: Belgium
Business locations: Global
Number of travellers/expatriates: 400 travellers
out of 4 500 people
Number of countries where the organisation is set up/ has an activity: 14
Q1 How important is the management of health, safety and security risks for international/cross-border travellers for your organisation? How has this developed in importance over the last five years? How do you think it will change over the next five years?
Q2 Does your organisation have a specific health, safety and security policy covering international/cross-border business travel? If so, what does this include?
We currently have a travel policy which has to be regularly updated and adapted to the situation. We do not currently have a health, safety and security policy, but we are developing one. We see that as part of our duty of care for our travellers. It is a mixture of legal and moral duty.
Certainly, enforcement of the laws concerning the well-being of employees is being reinforced. There are more questions from outside agencies, legal bodies and regulators, for example, asking how we manage travel. There is more awareness that if something happens, that the families and legal bodies will ask us what we have been doing to manage the risk, and it will not be good if we cannot say anything. Therefore, our motivation is two-fold. We need to look first after our people, and we need to look after the interests of the company.
So we have two priorities:
• First to fulfill our duty of care with regard to our employees;
• Second, to protect the interests of our company with regard to the continuity of our
activities by having a solution in place if there is a problem. In addition, if there is a legal investigation, we want to have it documented that we did the job.
Q 3 How does your organisation bring together the functions of the different internal stake holders in managing travel security and what is your role? To what extent is senior management involved and how (active participation, reporting)?
We have put in place a group of which I am the moderator. It includes health and safety, HR and three quite senior operational people, so that we capture the experience of returning travellers. Their communications role is also very important, as they have to support us with strong communication within the companies.
Travel management is a procurement responsibility, which is focused on price, but for me there needs to be a balance between price and quality, not in the sense of comfort, but for safety and security, taking into account the experience of returning travellers from a risk management point of view. Having senior occupational people in the group who can speak from experience is important, because usually the procurement people do not do a lot of travelling.
We do not currently have a formal reporting system for experiences/incidents; it would be good to have the opportunity, but I don’t think there is a huge need.
ffffffffffIt is very important to us. The company has been growing over the last five years and we have more and more business in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and in emerging markets in Africa and the Middle East, including the Gulf. We have subsidiaries in some of these countries and we visit clients who can be anywhere including volatile places
We have two priorities. First to fulfill our duty of care with regards to our employees; Second to protect the interests of our company with regards to the continuity of our activities.
such as Kurdistan in Iraq.
Over the next five years I believe there will be significant changes because younger people have a different mentality to very experienced business travellers. They want more information and they are more risk averse. They want a balance between work and their private lives, and if they are going away for three weeks on business, they want to know that there are solutions in place to manage the risks. It is not a question of being told to go somewhere and just going. We can consider this a good development.
Also, we see that a lot of countries have become more risky and the situation can change quite rapidly. You may need to repatriate people and stop activities quickly.