Safety Applies to Traveling Too: How Small Business Travelers Can Stay Healthy
NIOSH recently released a resource guide that helps employers and managers ensure the safety of their employees before, during, and after their work travel trips.
All travel has associated risks, but international traveling is a whole other ballgame. For employees that travel internationally for work, there are many considerations that affect safety and health, and this is particularly relevant to smaller businesses. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recently released the Small Business International Travel Resource that provides valuable information and tools for employers and employees to address travel concerns.
For companies with fewer than 50 employees, international travel planning often falls to the employee or manager, and this makes it harder to ensure each employee is safe and healthy. NIOSH’s new resource to ensure worker travel safety is organized in three stages: pre-travel, on-travel, and post-travel.
While the resource helps the employee organize his/her plans chronologically, it also has the following assets for his/her benefit:
- Employer Task Timeline: Provides a way to plan travel and protect the employee by identifying key risk, liabilities, and necessary logistics and communication needs.
- Travel Planner: Employers can review this checklist with employees depending on their job, location, and personal needs to help manage risks, liability, and communication.
- Post Travel Report: Helps the employee prepare for onsite activity, the upcoming transition to daily life at home, and a way to schedule rest and reorientation upon return.
“Because many small businesses lack human resource staff to plan international work travel needs, the responsibility often falls on owners and managers,” said NIOSH Director John Howard, M.D. “This new international travel resource provides the necessary tools to anticipate and plan for safe and healthy travel abroad.”
This resource aims to help employees manage their trip planning and safety in all stages of travel (pre, during, and post). Most employees focus their energy on pre-travel and getting where they need to go. However, that is only the first step, and employers need to keep employees safe during the entirety of the trip. NIOSH’s travel resource even includes a travel health assessment, packing list, location health and safety plan, contact and emergency information forms, incident reports, and an international work travel resource directory.
Access the new Small Business International Travel Resource here. More information can be found on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention Traveler’s Health page or NIOSH’s Small Business topic page.