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Follow our step-by-step guide to achieving greater duty of care compliance for your employees. Gillian Upton explains all

One talks about gold standards but when Trish Kirke joined the BG Group seven years ago, she inherited a travel policy truly in the vanguard of duty of care. This was gold and then some! It had been benchmarked against other operators in the oil and gas industry and stands as a beacon for others to strive for, whatever their size or industry sector.

Having said that, there was room for improvement, but more on internal processes than anything else. The procurement team managed travel but no one was managing the travellers. “My job as Travel Manager was to get some consistency in the UK and also to look at a global remit as we operate in 26 countries, from Nigeria and Trinidad to the US and Egypt,” she explains. She sat in procurement initially; but now she’s in HR.

Any new initiatives have a global remit, but tend to be rolled out in the UK first. Kirke works with her colleagues around the world to ensure consistency in policy and processes.

“It’s a collaborative effort,” she says, “although we tend to drive it in the UK as we’re the largest asset by employee count and our global HQ is here.”

BG's travellers could find themselves on a rig out at sea, in an out of the way gas installation in Kazakhstan or be one of the 1,400 staff working at its HQ in Reading. By nature, oil and gas is a dangerous sector and BG's number one priority is the health and safety of all staff. “Staff are the highest collateral we have,” says Kirke. BG employs around 5,000 staff worldwide.

BG's travel policy is rooted firmly in looking after its travellers as best it can. The BG Group is of a size and business scope to justify a security team that checks all destinations travellers do business in. The company buys in a travel tracker product from Control Risks that sits on the company’s web portal – this generates numerous reports which are delivered to all locations and identifies where travellers are at any given time.

Its travel management company, HRG – on board since 2002 as an eight-man outplant near HQ – security vets suppliers, while BG uses the services of an aviation specialist to check the safety records of any aircraft or helicopter that the company charters.

The company has its own CSR team, its own occupational health department that manages the health and welfare of its travellers with a resident chief medical officer, and medical team, on site.

The company’s induction programme is rigorous. On top of that, it runs monthly travel security briefings and a range of training courses all geared to staff health and safety as part of the employee package of benefits. “It’s a huge cost but BG feels that looking after staff is key. It’s phenomenal care of employees and it’s fed right down from the chief executive. He leads by example,” says Kirke.

Kirke believes any size of company can achieve this level of duty of care. “There are simple things to do, then embed them into your organisation, and publicise your policy. Any process you put in place should be easy. Be fair, firm and honest and, above all, make it simple for everybody.

“Anyone that works at BG feels a confidence because we go above and beyond. Although change is a difficult thing, people are always grateful for the consistency.

“When I came on board only five per cent of hotel bookings went through the TMC; now it’s over 90 per cent out of the UK,” she says. “We gave everybody global access to all the information, which gives a consistency. We gave them the tools to do the job basically,” she says. “If you put policy, process and procedure in place, responsibility follows through,” she believes. These are Kirke’s three unrelenting principles.

STEP 1: Kirke’s first step was to bring consistency to the global travel policy. She inherited a policy that was open and flexible, providing for all air travel in business class, for example. Now it’s economy on flights under four hours and business on flights over four hours. She benchmarked the oil and gas industry and that was what was expected. Furthermore, after a long-haul flight (any flight over seven hours’ duration, a car is provided to get the traveller home safely. The same goes with over-time or late working.

STEP 2: Kirke pulled together a central repository of travel information on BG's global travel website. This included items as diverse as health and security aspects, a global hotel directory, preferred partner details for all aspects of travel including apartment providers, and, of course, the global company travel policy.

STEP 3: BG has evaluated a self-booking tool every year for the last four years. “It doesn’t work for us,” she says. “We have booking down to a fine art with HRG. We use email and phone and we find that an SBT wouldn’t give us a cost benefit.” Nonetheless, Kirke will continue to evaluate the technology.

STEP 4: The travel team has tried to educate travellers of the merits of advance booking but this is not always possible as oil and gas is a very reactive and dynamic industry. “We try and educate as much as possible,” she says. An HRG account manager is on site two days each week and BG runs a continuous programme of educating and updating travellers and travel bookers through focus groups and presentations.

STEP 5: BG's travel policy embraces car usage with great gusto. It runs a no-mobile-phone-in-cars policy to avoid any potential risk while travellers are driving, and takes it a step farther by mandating that all staff around the world – and their partners – attend a half-day Defensive Driving course. Explains Kirke: “Most accidents happen on the road, not in the air. We have three-quarters of our staff driving to work.“

STEP 6: BG runs half-day Intervention Training courses with the aim of preventing accidents. “You see it all the time; for example, when someone is walking down stairs with a mobile phone in one hand and a hot cup of coffee in the other,” explains Kirke. “We train people to intervene and stop them.” The courses are open to everyone, including contractors such as catering staff, cleaners and security personnel.

STEP 7: BG is about to launch Flight Safety awareness training for all its business travellers. Attendees will experience going down an aircraft shoot, exiting a smoke-filled cabin, be advised on what the safest floors are to stay in at an hotel, and be advised of a checklist when arriving at an hotel – how to find escape routes and so on.

STEP 8: Twice a year BG checks the tyres and windscreens of every car, and that’s not just company cars but also all private cars that are used on business.

STEP 9: BG is very conscious of the stresses it places on people and runs a stress management course for all line managers.

STEP 10: Although speaking from such a lofty height, Kirke believes any size of company can grasp duty of care responsibilities and embrace them wholeheartedly. “Small and medium-sized enterprises can train the trainers if they have no budget to outsource training,” suggests Kirke. “Because of our duty of care, we enjoy a great ripple effect to other parts of the business, from high staff retention to high productivity levels.”

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