Rethinking Corporate Duty of Care

At the beginning of last year, the world was hit by the largest health and economic crisis in recent times. This forced businesses across sectors to adopt special measures to protect their employees while maintaining operations, and required a reassessment of many elements of risk management, including duty of care.

Duty of care has always been a priority, but was often managed behind the scenes. Unique challenges now mean that companies may have to rethink how corporate responsibility will look in these unusual times.

Duty of care is an organization’s moral and legal responsibility to take all the possible steps to ensure its employees’ health, safety, and security, whether at the office or even working from home — actionable strategies to fulfill this duty form a specific management program within the business.

What is Duty of Care in the Corporate Context?

For businesses, fulfilling duty of care means that corporations must make all decisions in their capacities as corporate fiduciaries and must act reasonably as a prudent person in their position would.

Managers and other top-tier leaders of businesses need to make reasonable decisions in their business best interests. Duty of Care is owed to their companies and is known as the business judgment rule. How then do you rethink Duty of Care during a global health and economic crisis?

Situations do change, and when it comes to multinational corporations, there will always be some element of risk. Sometimes, no matter how much care a person takes, the case can’t be “reasonably safe” in the eyes of the law. The person, therefore, has to be held responsible for damages regardless. These situations are known as strict liability cases. Some examples include the possession of predatory animals or the manufacturing of incendiary devices.

Today businesses are faced with COVID-19 and are often expected to exercise additional care for their employees.

How Can Businesses Adjust their Approach to Duty of Care?

Here are ways an international business can adjust their approach to duty of care in light of an increasingly risky and dynamic world:

Conduct Risk Assessments

Carry out a proper risk assessment. Has your organization been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you trying to resume international travel for your critical employees? Has your shipping been disrupted by political changes? A proper analysis will help you take the next steps. For example, what can an airline company do when a travel ban is in place? Or what does a brick and mortar store do if people can’t come to the store? How can you keep your employees safe if they need to travel to a more unstable country or region?

A good risk assessment involves a lot of moving parts, but especially understanding the relative health, safety, and security risks in locations where employees frequently travel or reside. How are your employees affected? Are they in danger zones? If you can understand these aspects, you move on to the next step of action.

Identify and inventory risks that are associated with the job responsibilities in the specific location.

Based on the nature of your business, you need to be sure to provide the necessary resources to enable safe operations. An obvious example is for companies working in the healthcare sector: you must provide personal protective equipment (PPE) and ensure proper procedures to strictly receive and treat patients.

Strategic Planning

Failure to plan is planning to fail. You must then plan going forward and adapt to the new normal due to the global pandemic. Ensure you show your company’s commitment to the safety of your employees

Duty of Care requirements can be enacted by legislation and common law. They are also the result of cultural and social expectations of acceptable standards of care. It can be challenging to stay ahead of developments, but the right tools can help.

Even if you don’t have the manpower or budget for a dedicated risk analysis team, a tool like Hyperion can make sure that you are doing your due diligence when it comes to keeping your employees safe and protecting them from the unexpected. Having access to on-demand forecasting of emerging threats and risks to your critical assets makes it substantially easier to fulfill your legal and social obligations.

Develop & Maintain a Current Crisis Management Plan

Do you have a crisis management plan? One thing the past year has shown is how important it is for companies to be able to adapt and adjust to a crisis. Those that have been able to pivot have massively outcompeted slower and less nimble companies. Whether it’s an unexpected weather event, political unrest, or another pandemic, there’s no reason why you should be caught unaware.

Proactively Manage Employee Travel

Are you a multinational, with employees spread across the globe? Ensure that you are managing trips in light of new COVID-19 risk measures or with an understanding of how different countries manage quarantining or self-isolation. Keeping an eye on the political situation is increasingly important as well. Your travel contingency plans should bear both eventualities in mind.

When thinking about Duty of Care, make sure you pay attention to the details, completeness, and applicability of the benefits package offered to global workers. Monitor family relations or connections in international assignments.

Investigate the cost, benefits of travel, emergency, medical insurance, kidnapping insurance. Investigate the use of third parties for medical and security assistance and global emergency medical/travel insurance. Investigate the use of third parties for global travel tracking systems.

Under OSHA rules, corporations are subject to significant legal liability if they fail to adequately plan for emergencies when sending workers to work abroad — putting your employees at risk while they travel, while already a bad business practice, is a substantial legal risk as well.

Invest in the Right Technology

Adaptable companies are increasingly working online, but just a few years ago this wasn’t comprehensible and many legacy systems have proven a challenge when it comes to working from home. Technology has played a significant role in allowing businesses to adhere to COVID-19 measures to minimize risk and control the pandemic’s spread while keeping their doors open.

It is critical that businesses not put their employees in unnecessary danger during the pandemic (or during a dangerous weather event, or unexpected unrest), and allowing team members to work remotely has helped to make this possible.

Treat Duty of Care With Respect

The legal ramifications of breaching of Duty of Care are complicated and vary from case to case, but failure to plan may cause action alleging negligence. It may result in damages or the employee’s criminal prosecution, making it even more essential to have a good handle on the risks and dangers of international travel.

Geospark Analytics can help your business plan for the future, anticipate risks, and stay ahead of crises even before they’re happening. Contact us to find out more about how.