In June 2003 the families of three men employed by a small British company, Granger Telecom, settled a deal on the steps of the High Court for their negligence claim against the firm over the trio’s tragic and horrifying deaths almost five years earlier.
The three men had been sent by Granger to the troubled region of Chechnya, on the borders of Russia, in 1998 to help install a radio telephone system. They, together with a fourth man, were kidnapped, held hostage and, after negotiations for their release failed, beheaded.
The families of the three men employed by Granger claimed the company had been negligent in sending them to the region. Granger, and its insurers, admitted the precautions designed to keep the men safe in Chechnya had failed and, eventually, made an undisclosed settlement likely to have run into seven figures.
The case was a thankfully rare but powerful example of the risks that business travellers – and the companies that employ them – face when working away from home in an increasing number of countries and regions around the world. The US State Department currently has warnings to travellers about extreme risks that could face them in no fewer than 27 countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, almost one in seven of the globe’s independent nations. A big company might have 40,000 international trips a year to as many as 125 countries – some of which are going to be on that State Department list.
Of Nigeria, for example, the State Department says: “Road travel is dangerous. Robberies by armed gangs have been reported on rural roads and within major cities. Because of poor vehicle maintenance and driving conditions, public transportation throughout Nigeria can be dangerous and should be avoided. Taxis pose risks because of the possibility of fraudulent or criminal operators, old and unsafe vehicles, and poorly maintained roads … most Nigerian airlines have ageing fleets, and maintenance and operational procedures may be inadequate to ensure passenger safety.” In Nigeria, a common scam at Lagos airport, apparently, is for an insider to obtain a passenger’s name and pass it to an accomplice in the arrivals hall, who writes it on a welcome board. The unsuspecting victim is lured into a waiting car and taken off for who knows what.
There are areas of the United States where wiser travellers do not venture, of course, and that is before taking into account more general calamities, from hurricanes to terrorist attacks of the scale of 9/11. At the same time, while any half-awake company is aware of the risks of sending its people to do business in the world’s most notoriously dangerous countries – Iraq, Somalia, Colombia, to name three – there are perils today even in major European cities as global conflicts spill over to domestic locations. The bombings this year in London and last year in Madrid made companies with personnel out and about in the places where the bombs went off realise the importance of being able to check quickly where their workers were and whether they were safe.
There are three sides to the security story for business travellers. The first is training and awareness for the people in the field, so that they know how not to put themselves in danger. They should be taught to watch out for taxis not ordered by telephone or on the traveller’s behalf by a responsible individual such as a hotel concierge; the cab could be stolen, and driven by criminals, who have been known to beat their victims up and take them to ATM machines where they are forced to withdraw money and hand it over. Do not get too chatty with strangers in Asia: they could be setting up a scam. Dress to be inconspicuous, and carry items such as a laptop computer in a backpack rather than its own carrycase or a briefcase. Beware of distractions at airport check-in desks, even at security checks or in restrooms: putting bags down for a moment gives a thief a chance to strike. Choose a recommended hotel, and even then don’t hang the “Please make up room” sign on the door when out; leave the “occupied” sign on the doorknob instead. Leaving the radio or TV on while the room is vacant is another deterrent. Don’t go walking about alone: groups of three or more are vastly safer.
Some security specialists recommend moving any loose furniture towards the door at night, so as to create a maze for villains to get tangled up in if they try to enter the room while the occupant is sleeping. Other recommendations include carrying a razorblade to scratch off stickers on hire cars that might indicate a rental/business traveller driver; and, for perhaps the seriously paranoid, buying a ceramic plate that will fit inside a briefcase, which allows it to be used as a shield against bullets.
The next level is specialist advice and protection for countries where the danger is a step up from simple theft or mugging. Companies such as Control Risks Group of London, Pinkerton Global Intelligence Services, Rosenbluth International of Philadelphia or iJET Travel Intelligence of Maryland, supply overviews on the risks facing business travellers in 200 countries around the world and hundreds of individual cities, provide daily intelligence to company security officers and have guidance and backup for specific situations.
IJET, for example, runs something it calls GlobalGuardian, a business travel security service that provides alerts for travellers to changing risks around the world, and also gives access for its clients to professional medical, security and legal advice; emergency medical and political evacuation; repatriation services; language translation and interpretation services; travel assistance for family members; and emergency cash advances. Companies will also have advice on specific precautions to be taken in particular countries. For anyone doing business in, say, Algeria, the recommendation is likely to be for an escort of armed guards and a bullet-proof car, costing about $1,000 a day.
If things start to go wrong unexpectedly – a tsunami, an earthquake, a terrorist attack, a plane crash – iJET and companies like it will have in place a system to track and communicate with employees, find out if they are safe or in need of assistance, and speedily deploy emergency response services throughout the world. After the Asian tsunami of December 26, 2004 for example, with the help of medical and relief agencies, iJet managed to locate all 250 of employees of client companies who were operating in the nine countries stricken by the disaster. Only one died: a businessman on a side-trip to Phuket, Thailand. Control Risks runs a similar system it calls CRTravelTracker, an online service which automatically collates all employees’ travel details, allowing clients to control where employees can travel, and locating them at a moment’s notice. With this Control Risks offers a round-the-clock response service which, in the event of an incident, allows travellers to contact it directly for advice, while helping companies to contact their travellers to check their safety and provide them with recommendations to reduce their risks.
The final plank to any company’s security policy is a system to click in when, despite the planning, the knowledge and the training, it all goes a la poire. If, for example, an employee has been kidnapped, the company needs a crisis management plan in place so that it does not react in panic. It needs to know where to find skilled negotiators, and how not to make a bad situation worse. There are others besides kidnappers and the employee to consider: a company needs to know how to handle relatives in such a situation; and how to handle the media: if the crisis is going to be made worse by publicity, for example, companies need someone who knows how to get the media onside.
Operators such as Globe Risk Holdings International take clients through exercises of situations that could arise, allowing them to feel happy with contingency plans – and enabling them to show that, by giving staff travelling to risky areas preventative training, alongside contingency plans, the company is doing its best to protect the people at risk, thereby minimising the risk of litigation from families of a kidnap victim. Other companies, such as Control Risks, also offer personal security training, and will put its own people on the ground, organising security and meeting and greeting visiting executives when they arrive. For the truth is that, although on the balance sheet it is possible to quantify risk versus reward, when it comes to situations like that described at the beginning of this article – where lives are threatened and the devastation to both companies and families is insurmountable – there is no reward that can justify risks of this magnitude, and they must be addressed and managed at all costs.
