Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/169755
Expats Duty of Care An Asian perspective on travel and risk management. By Dr. Philippe Guibert and Alex McSporran A rising number of employees are now being required to work outside their countries of residence as expatriates or business travelers. Away from familiar surroundings, employees can encounter precarious situations, and might not be as prepared to manage these risks as well as they would have if they were in their home country. As the quest to seek new markets takes global companies to ever more remote places, the risk landscape for globally-mobile workers is also evolving: In the Ernst & Young Global Mobility Effectiveness Survey 2012, 48 per cent of companies surveyed have increased the number of people sent to emerging markets year-on-year. The consequence of these recent trends in global mobility has been to heighten the employers' duty of care— [40] HRO TODAY GLOBAL | SUMMER 2013 their legal, fiduciary, and moral obligation to look after the health, safety, security, and well-being of their workers around the world. And this has special meaning for employers in Asia, where there are still many discrepancies between various national regulations. In some Asian countries, stringent legal requirements exist to enforce duty of care on private employers, but in others, these regulations are lacking or inconsistently applied. This can pose a challenge: How does a firm working across borders enact a workplace safety and health initiative for employees who work away from home and ensure that this is being adhered to consistently across their operations worldwide?