What Is Duty of Care in Business Travel and Are You Meeting It?
Duty of care in business travel is an employer's legal and moral obligation to take reasonable steps to protect employees while they're travelling for work. In practice, that means having a policy, a way to reach travellers in an emergency, and a plan for when things go wrong — not simply hoping they won't.
Duty of care in business travel is an employer's legal and moral obligation to take reasonable steps to protect employees while they're travelling for work. In practice, that means having a policy, a way to reach travellers in an emergency, and a plan for when things go wrong — not simply hoping they won't.
What Duty of Care Actually Means for Your Business
Strip away the legal language and duty of care comes down to one idea: if you send someone somewhere for work, you're responsible for taking reasonable steps to keep them safe while they're there. That obligation doesn't disappear because your business doesn't have a dedicated risk or HR function — it applies the moment an employee books a flight on the company's behalf.
Being reasonable doesn't mean eliminating every possible risk. It means being able to show you thought about the risks a trip involved, took sensible precautions, and had a way to respond if something happened. Courts and regulators judge duty of care against what a reasonable employer in your position would have done — not against a perfect outcome.
Why It's Not Just a Big-Business Problem
It's tempting to assume duty of care is a large-enterprise concern — something for companies with in-house security teams and global risk platforms. For an SME sending an employee interstate for a client meeting or overseas for a conference, the obligation is exactly the same, even without the infrastructure to match.
That gap between obligation and capability is where most SMEs are exposed. A formal risk team isn't required, but something is: a documented policy, a point of contact, and a plan.
The Risks You're Actually Responsible For
Business travel introduces risks that don't exist in a normal office day. The common ones include:
- Illness or a medical emergency in an unfamiliar location
- Accidents, from minor injuries to serious incidents
- Extreme weather events and travel disruption
- Political unrest or civil disturbance at the destination
- Lost passports, visas or travel documents
- A traveller becoming uncontactable during a disruption
None of these are exotic. They're the everyday realities of frequent travel, and each one is foreseeable — which is exactly the standard duty of care is measured against.
What a Well-Structured Duty of Care Program Looks Like
A Written Travel Policy
A policy doesn't need to be lengthy, but it should set out how trips are approved, what travellers should do in an emergency, and who they contact. If nothing is written down, there's no consistent standard to point to.
Pre-Trip Risk Awareness
Before a trip is booked, it's worth understanding the destination: is there anything travellers should be briefed on, from local conditions to health considerations?
A Way to Reach Every Traveller
If a cyclone, strike or security incident disrupts a region, you need to know who's there and how to reach them. Real-time traveller tracking and destination-specific risk alerts turn "we think Sarah's in Jakarta this week" into certainty.
24/7 Support When Something Goes Wrong
Disruptions rarely happen during business hours. A duty of care program is only as good as the support behind it when a traveller needs help at 2am in an unfamiliar city.
FCBT's Travel Managers build these elements into the way a business books, with real-time traveller tracking, SMS risk alerts, pre-trip risk assessments and 24/7 emergency support built into the service rather than bolted on afterwards.
Where Most SMEs Fall Short
The most common gap isn't a lack of care — it's a lack of structure. Businesses often rely on ad hoc phone calls and email chains rather than a documented process, have no clear view of where travellers are at any given time, or assume travel insurance covers duty of care. It doesn't: insurance addresses financial loss after an incident, not the employer's obligation to prevent foreseeable harm in the first place.
The Bottom Line
Duty of care isn't a box-ticking exercise reserved for large corporates — it's a practical responsibility that applies the moment your business sends someone on the road. The good news is that meeting it doesn't require building an in-house risk function. A documented policy, visibility over your travellers, and reliable support when something goes wrong will cover the vast majority of what's genuinely foreseeable.
If you're not confident your current approach would hold up, it's worth a conversation with a dedicated Travel Manager who can help build duty of care into how your business already books travel.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is duty of care in business travel?
It's an employer's legal and moral obligation to take reasonable steps to protect employees from foreseeable risks while they travel for work, from booking through to their return.
Is duty of care a legal requirement for Australian businesses?
Yes. Workplace health and safety obligations extend to employees travelling for work, regardless of business size, requiring employers to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm
What happens if a business fails to meet its duty of care obligations?
Consequences can include legal liability, reputational damage, and — most importantly — genuine harm to an employee that a reasonable process could have prevented or better managed.
Do small businesses need a formal travel policy?
Yes. A written policy doesn't need to be complex, but it establishes a consistent standard for approvals, emergency contacts and expected conduct — something an ad hoc approach can't provide.
How can a dedicated Travel Manager help meet duty of care obligations?
A Travel Manager can build risk assessment, traveller tracking, alerts and 24/7 emergency support into the everyday booking process, so duty of care is handled as part of how travel is managed rather than as a separate project.