The Duty of Care Perimeter Has Moved

Sep 15

3 min read

Updated: Sep 21

An organisation can have a well-managed office and still have gaps in how it supports people elsewhere.

A colleague travelling alone. A director speaking at a publicly advertised event. An employee working from home whose role has attracted unwanted attention.

The office arrangements may be clear. The arrangements around those situations deserve the same consideration.

Protecting people starts with understanding where and how they actually work.

Where work takes people

Business travel involves more than the destination. Transfers, unfamiliar accommodation and changes to an itinerary can all affect someone’s exposure and their access to support.

At conferences and offsite meetings, responsibility may be shared between an employer, an organiser and a venue. It helps to establish who is handling what before the event, particularly where senior people’s attendance is public.

Home working needs consideration too. HSE confirms that employers have the same health and safety responsibilities for home workers as for other workers. It also notes that the risks will often be low and the necessary actions straightforward.

The aim is proportionate preparation, based on the work and the circumstances.

When visibility follows someone home

Some roles make people more identifiable outside their workplace.

A company biography, conference programme or public social media account can reveal connections between a person, their employer and their movements. Each detail may seem unremarkable on its own. Together, they can make someone easier to locate or approach.

This deserves particular attention when an organisation is dealing with controversy, a dispute or unwanted scrutiny.

Public criticism does not automatically mean a security threat. The practical question is whether there are signs of targeted abuse, intimidation or behaviour that changes someone’s exposure.

HSE’s guidance on work-related violence includes verbal and online abuse as well as physical assault. Reporting arrangements should make it easy for staff to raise concerns and understand what will happen next.

Who owns the response?

Gaps can appear when several teams each hold part of the picture.

HR may know that an employee is worried. Communications may be monitoring hostile coverage. Security may have received a report about an approach outside the office. A travel provider may know that an itinerary has changed.

Those pieces need to reach someone who can assess them together.

A useful review establishes who receives concerns, who decides what action is needed and how the affected person will be kept informed. It should also cover what happens when the usual contact is unavailable.

For family offices

Business and personal exposure can overlap particularly closely for family offices.

A public business role may draw attention to relatives, household staff or places the family regularly visits. Those connections may warrant consideration within the wider security arrangements.

That does not mean every person has the same legal status or that an employer’s obligations automatically extend to every relative. It means assessing the actual circumstances and agreeing where responsibility and support sit.

A manageable place to start

Choose a few situations your people have recently experienced: a business trip, an external event or a period of working alone.

For each, consider what could reasonably have gone wrong, what preparation was in place and how the person would have obtained help.

Include the people doing the work in that conversation. They can often identify practical gaps that are difficult to see from a policy document.

Record any changes, give someone responsibility for making them and set a review date.

SJ Group International helps organisations and family offices assess personal security exposure, review their arrangements and prepare for incidents wherever their people need to operate.

To discuss your requirements, contact office@sjgroupinternational.com.