Duty of Care

Taking care of your people

In the rapidly evolving world of global business, the concept of Duty of Care has become a central pillar of organizational responsibility. It represents more than just a legal mandate; it's a reflection of a deep-seated commitment to the well-being and safety of teams across the globe.

We help build a duty of care program that fits how your organization actually operates — where your people travel, what they do once they are there, and who is responsible at three in the morning in another time zone.

Broadening the scope of Duty of Care for global teams

Duty of care across international operations breaks into a few distinct obligations:

• All-Encompassing Employee Safety: This extends to ensuring mental well-being and providing continuous support in varied environments, from familiar office settings to international locales.
• Legal obligation: Duty of care is a legal standard in many jurisdictions, not only a moral one, and it follows where your people are rather than where you are.
• Assessment before travel: Establishing what a specific location actually requires, rather than what the general advisory says about the country.
• Preparedness for Crisis Situations: Developing actionable plans for various emergencies is key to protecting both employees and business continuity.
• Training people can use: Preparation that covers what to do and who to call, in a form somebody can act on under stress.

Why the framework matters

Implementing a solid strategy is an important set of decisions with far-reaching implications:

• Enhancing Team Focus and Loyalty: A secure and well-supported team contributes to higher motivation and productivity.
• Upholding Organizational Integrity: A strong commitment to Duty of Care enhances corporate reputation and trust.
• Ensuring Smooth Business Operations: Minimizing disruptions leads to more efficient and effective business processes.
• Recruitment and retention: Experienced people ask what happens if something goes wrong before they accept a posting. A clear answer is a hiring advantage. An evasive one is read as a warning.

Tailoring Duty of Care strategies with Falcone International

We build duty of care into the risk management you already run rather than alongside it: the legal obligations, the operating practice, and the review cycle that keeps both current as your footprint changes.

Getting a program in place

Opting for Falcone International means selecting a partner adept at understanding the complexities of global team management. The focus is on creating a safer, more compliant work environment, enhancing the resilience of the organization in a global context, paving the way for sustained success in the dynamic global business arena.

How the engagement runs

A duty of care program is built in four stages, and the last one is the only real test of the first three.

1. Mapping

Who travels, who is posted, who is a contractor rather than an employee, and who owns the duty in each case. Contractors and locally engaged staff are where the obligation is most often assumed to sit with someone else.

2. Location assessment

What each destination actually requires, which is rarely what the country-level advisory says. Where a site is involved rather than a trip, this runs into security and safety assessment.

3. Building the response

Named individuals rather than roles, a contact route that works out of hours and across time zones, and an escalation path with the authority to spend money at three in the morning.

4. Rehearsal

An unrehearsed plan is a document. We test it against a realistic scenario and fix what breaks, which is usually the phone tree and the assumption that a particular person will be reachable.

What you get

• A current picture of who is where, and who carries the obligation for each of them.
• Location assessments at the level of detail your people actually need.
• Response plans naming individuals, with contact routes that have been tested.
• An assessment of your regulatory and voluntary obligations, and whether you can evidence meeting them.
• Findings from the rehearsal, and what to fix first.

Straight answers

How do we keep track of all our people?
Tooling helps and does not solve it. The binding constraint is process: whether travel is booked through a route that records it, and whether short trips and contractor movement are captured at all. Most gaps are in the second category.

What plans do we need, for what scenarios?
Fewer than most vendors suggest. Medical incident, serious crime, civil disruption, natural event, and evacuation cover the great majority. Depth matters more than breadth: five rehearsed plans beat twenty filed ones.

Can we get resources anywhere in the world?
Broadly yes, through established networks, but response times vary enormously by location and that variance should be known in advance rather than discovered. We will tell you plainly where coverage is thin.

Is there a single worldwide provider?
Several claim to be. In practice most subcontract in the harder markets, which is fine provided you know it and have tested the chain. Ask any provider who actually turns up, in the specific places you operate.

Are we meeting our obligations?
That is answerable and worth answering before somebody else asks. Duty of care is a legal standard in many jurisdictions, and it follows where your people are, not where you are — so obligations can attach in places you have no entity. Training that supports it is covered under workshops and training.