In most business and corporate setups, employees must travel to achieve sales objectives, attend conferences, or offer technical support to clients. Business travel helps companies grow revenues and establish a presence across regions and countries. It is an excellent investment for networking and marketing. Corporate travel managers strive to ensure that the business tours of employees are safe, smooth, and successful. Booking travel and accommodation as per travel requests, managing travel expenses, and proper business travel insurance without deviating from the company’s travel policy are challenging tasks.
Travel risk management is a crucial aspect of a travel manager’s job. It attempts to reduce risks during a business travel by taking proactive steps. Business travel is full of uncertainties. Multiple factors during business travel assignments can impact employees’ health and safety, causing severe financial losses to the organization. A business travel insurance solution helps companies enhance their preparedness to deal with financial loss.
What is business travel insurance?
Responsibility of employers towards employees’ safety extends across all business activities within the office, factory, and field. Business travel insurance enables organizations to secure employees and equipment during every business tour. These solutions protect employees during business trips at every stage of travel and business assignments.
Business travel insurance offers coverage to corporate travelers. It covers several unforeseen events affecting the smooth implementation of a business tour. The insurances aim to provide monetary help to the enterprise to compensate for the damages and losses during a business trip.
Broad-spectrum corporate travel insurance coverage helps organizations attract and retain good employees. It can be an integral part of a company’s travel policy. Travel managers may consider purchasing blanket travel insurance for all employees or allow employees to buy relevant coverage to claim in the expense report.
Importance of business travel insurance
One may wonder why separate travel insurance is necessary when most companies secure employees by purchasing workers’ compensation policies or general liability. Usually, general-purpose policies offer no coverage to employees while traveling. Business travel insurance policies offer exclusive coverage against travel risks that apply to the type of business or activities your employees will undertake during the business trips.
Every employer has a moral and legal binding to take care of their employees’ well-being and safety when traveling to fulfill the company’s business objectives. The Duty of Care is a crucial attribute of the organization’s travel policy.
The moral and legal responsibility extends to board executives, sales staff, service representatives, consultants, and contract workers during business trips on the company’s behalf. A business trip exposes employees to several risks besides health issues. Theft, loss of luggage, equipment damage, flight cancellations, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters are all included in such policies. The risks are more complex because of the recent global health crisis as countries resorted to many travel restrictions.
Travel managers face multiple challenges in travel risk management. Business travel insurance is a vital aspect of Duty of Care, as travel managers can choose an appropriate cover to align with the company’s travel policy.
What does business travel insurance cover?
The list of factors impacting corporate travel is endless. A corporate travel manager must consider situations that risk employees and the company’s assets.
Several business travel insurance for employees and corporates offer exclusive coverage to take care of different risks. The following categories provide a broad perspective on what business travel insurance may cover.
1. Emergencies requiring evacuations
Corporate travel risks assumed a different perspective because of the recent global events involving diverse unanticipated situations. These included natural calamities, global health emergencies, and terrorist attacks. Such emergencies often disrupt travel programs, as employees cannot move out of the city or country. The problems can worsen because of unknown places and language issues. Smooth evacuation of employees and safe return to their hometowns are crucial in these situations.
2. Cancellation of business trips
Many events may be responsible for the cancellation of a business tour. These include medical issues, hospitalization, weather problems, flight cancellations, and other out-of-control factors. Insurance coverage can take care of expenditures towards medical treatment, hospital or hotel stay, ticket cancellation, and other incidental expenses.
3. Loss of luggage and theft
Business trips require employees to carry high-end equipment like laptops, smartphones, electronic gadgets for presentations, demo articles, and display equipment for trade fairs. These are expensive articles. There is a likelihood of transit damage and theft. Ensuring these items is possible by purchasing appropriate business travel insurance coverage.
Must Read: What Are The Different Business Travel Challenges
How to find the best business travel insurance policy
No single standard policy can satisfy all business travel insurance needs. Corporate travel managers should have an in-depth understanding of travel risks, particularly business travel, as per the business vertical and employee’s job profile. Business travel risks for a field service engineer differ from those for a sales guy. A corporate travel manager must consider multiple variables before finalizing a travel insurance policy.
A travel insurance policy can cover single or multiple business trips. One should consider multi-trip coverage if several employees regularly travel as part of their job profile. The coverage extends to all business tours within a certain time and covers a maximum of 31 days per business tour. Review the basic coverage options and costs while comparing policies from different providers. Ideal coverage should extend to domestic and international travel. Know the maximum amount of benefits.
Preferably, look for 24-hour coverage. Many reputed insurance companies offer additional benefits. Discuss the claim process in the event of any emergency. Last, you must find out about the support facilities. Having round-the-clock support is preferable if your employees travel across time zones.
Conclusion
Integrating business travel insurance solutions into the company’s travel management platform secures employees with timely alerts through an efficient employee tracking feature. Location tracking on travel management platforms such as Paxes helps the round-the-clock monitoring of employees to ensure their safety. Travel managers are in a stronger position to offer emergency help to needy employees. SaaS-based travel management solutions enable the integration of business travel coverage into the travel program. Corporate travel managers can easily access an appropriate insurance travel provider from the inventory these platforms.
Business Travel Insurance FAQs
Why is business travel insurance required?
Business travel insurance is required for the safety and security of corporate travelers. Business travel insurance is necessary, as it provides coverage and security from any hassles or mishaps that can happen during travel.
What does business travel insurance cover for a corporate traveler?
Business travel insurance secures the traveler financially by compensating any losses that might occur during corporate travel.
What is travel risk management?
Travel risk management helps assess any risks or mishaps that can happen during a trip. Business travel insurance becomes an integral part of TRM as it provides a solution for the safety and security of the business traveler.
What are the safety risks when traveling?
Corporate travel is prone to many risks. Some possible risks include health and hygiene issues, emergencies leading to evacuation, loss of personal belongings or luggage, etc.
