Duty of Care When Staff Travel

What the obligation is

Duty of care is the employer’s legal obligation to take reasonable steps to protect employees from harm that could have been foreseen. It is owed because somebody is at work. The place where they work does not change it.

Two words in that definition carry the weight. “Reasonable” means the standard is not perfection: an employer is not liable for everything that happens. “Foreseeable” means the test applies to what could have been anticipated and prepared for. That is why the obligation is met in advance and never afterwards.

This has an uncomfortable but useful consequence. An employer who never assessed the risk cannot argue that the harm was unforeseeable. The missing assessment is itself the failure.

Where it comes from in Europe, and in Greece

In the European Union the foundation is Council Directive 89/391/EEC, the framework directive on the safety and health of workers. It places the general obligation on the employer and requires the employer to evaluate risks.

Greece transposed it through Presidential Decree 17/1996. The decree was later codified in the code of laws on health and safety at work, ratified by Law 3850/2010. The Greek obligations are concrete: a written assessment of occupational risk, preventive and protective measures, information and training for employees, and health surveillance. The employer’s safety technician prepares the written assessment, together with the occupational physician where the business requires one.

A company sending staff abroad does not step outside that framework. The work is still the employer’s work. The risks of doing it in another country were foreseeable when the trip was approved.

What ISO 31030 sets out

The law states the obligation but does not say how to meet it. ISO 31030:2021 is the international guidance that fills the gap, and the field now uses it as its reference point.

It guides organisations on managing the risks that travel creates, both for the traveller and for the organisation. It sets out a structured approach: policy, programme development, identification of threats and hazards, risk assessment, prevention and mitigation, and review.

Two points about its scope are worth knowing. It applies to any organisation, of any size and in any sector. It covers travel undertaken on the organisation’s behalf, and not leisure travel. That distinction decides whether a company’s incentive trip falls inside the policy or outside it. In almost every case, it is inside.

What it looks like on a Greek island

The general rules become specific quickly once a group is somewhere with one road and one clinic.

Medical care comes first. Most Greek islands have a health centre rather than a hospital, and serious cases move to Athens, Heraklion or Rhodes. EKAB, the national emergency service, runs helicopter transfers to reach the inhabited islands. Urgent transport from an island to the mainland for a life-threatening condition is generally provided without charge. The emergency number throughout Greece is 112, and it reaches every service, including the coastguard.

Then there is the water. Almost every incentive or offsite programme in Greece involves boats. That means a headcount checked at both ends, a named person responsible for it, and an advance decision about who cancels a crossing and on what basis.

Heat is the third. July and August routinely bring conditions in which Greece restricts outdoor work during the hottest hours of the day. A programme that has 60 people standing at an archaeological site at 2pm has a medical event built into it.

Distance is the last. The last ferry and the last flight of the day are the real limits of an island itinerary, and both depend on the weather.

The part that gets missed

Most travel risk programmes are strong on what a policy document can list. They are weak on the one thing it cannot: knowing where people are.

The gap is nearly always the same. The company knows the group’s itinerary. It does not know that 8 people took a boat to another island on the free afternoon, that 2 hired scooters, or that somebody stayed 3 days after the programme ended and is still travelling on the company’s arrangements.

The fix is plain. It is a single, current record of who is where, held by somebody who is awake, with a way of reaching every one of them. The rest of a travel risk policy builds on that.

What to have in place before a group travels

1. A written risk assessment for this trip, separate from the corporate policy.
2. A single point of contact available around the clock, with the authority to act without approval.
3. The medical route from each location: the nearest health centre, the nearest hospital, how somebody is moved, and who pays for it at the time.
4. Confirmed insurance covering everything on the programme, including the boats, the water sports and any activity somebody added later.
5. A way of accounting for every person, including during free time, and a briefing that tells them how to reach you rather than the other way round.