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Why I’m Cheering For Uber

I landed at Heathrow at 10PM and needed a ride to the airport Sheraton on Bath road. My phone was acting up so I wasn’t able to use the Uber app that worked earlier that day in Qatar, and in the preceding days in Abu Dhabi, Brisbane, Los Angeles, and London. So I did what any road-weary traveler would do – I hailed a taxi. As the driver picked up my roll-aboard he looked at me and framed his demand as a question, “You’re paying cash right?”

What? Of course I am – I’ve been held captive by cabbie’s all over the world – and though I have tremendous respect for the most professional among them, the London Cabbies, I know better than to negotiate a credit card payment near midnight in the middle of nowhere (T4 is very quiet that late).

That four-mile drive lasted twenty minutes and cost my employer more than $30.

There are 400 airlines operating scheduled service around the globe, I don’t know how many hotel brands, or travel agencies exist, but ground transportation companies are part of a very fragmented industry. Until now.

I used four airlines to fly from Dallas, to Fiji, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and back to Dallas via London. The Western shore of Nadi, Fiji was the only place I couldn’t find Uber.

I’m not surprised by the polarized reaction discussions about Uber generate among travel managers. It’s hard to grasp how many problems Uber solved for globe-trotters and urban dwellers alike unless you’ve lived through it.

1. I can see where my car on the map in the Uber app before I request one.

2. I know the driver’s name and have his license plate before he arrives.

3. I can watch my journey in real-time on my phone while we travel to my destination – an address that I frequently plug-in before Uber arrives – which eliminates the three-minute discussion about where I’m headed and how to get there after the meter starts.

4. I get out of the car when I arrive at my destination. There’s no transaction or payment to the driver… no more lost cellphones or wallets because they’re safely tucked away before the driver pulled up to the curb. No more searches in his trunk to find those ancient multi-page slider-style receipts and listen to griping about how I needed to pay cash while he acts like it’s been months since anyone gave him a credit card.

5.  No more brake-stompers, tail-gators, loud-music listening, cellphone talking, A**hole drivers who act like they’re doing you a favor. You know what I mean if you’ve ever taken a cab between La Guardia and Midtown. Because I get to rate the driver after every trip. And if enough of his customers think he lacks the manners or skills to get us to our destination safely his ratings will plunge and Uber will cut him loose. How many taxi companies use customer ratings to do that?

Guess what? Uber driver’s rate their passengers too – and I care about my score – because if I ever need a ride out of a rough part of town at three in the morning I know someone will already know I’m a decent human-being and pick me up while the drunks and suckers have to hail a cab.

I know – Uber doesn’t blah, blah, blah, insurance, blah, blah, blah… well, I’ve jumped out of airplanes from 1,000′ without a camera and it wasn’t to enjoy the freefall, and I’ve flown airplanes upside down. I spent a few years as a first-responder too – I don’t care about insurance – that’s a check to give survivors. I care about safety. Have you seen the car Bob Simon was riding in when he died?  Here it is – the driver survived. I haven’t seen the full accident report, but early indications are that Bob was in the back and wasn’t wearing his seat belt.

If you really want your travelers to be safe tell them to buckle-up and only accept rides from Uber drivers with a 4.7+ rating.

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Paul’s talk – “Personal Branding and Digital Footprints” is a discussion about how people connect, learn, and grow. He introduces ideas and techniques you can apply to achieve your goals, enhance your career, and help other people along the way.

Paul Laherty leads Deloitte’s relationship with several major airlines. Over the past fifteen years he’s led teams in Sales, Marketing, and Finance at American Airlines, Advito, Travelocity, Diio, and Cornerstone Information Systems. Paul’s an instrument-rated pilot, writer, speaker, world-traveler, former Army Officer, a husband, and father.  He helps people and organizations achieve significance, travel safely, and think differently. Paul publishes at paullaherty.com, and is open to connecting on LinkedIn at LinkedIn/paullaherty, or twitter @paul_laherty.

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Self-Confident Networking

Successful people are self-confident. Confidence alone doesn’t make you successful, but it’s so important it’s worth studying in detail.

Confidence has several ingredients – how we act, look, feel, what we say, and how we say it. Our body language, speech, and delivery influence people around us.  Amy Cuddy taught the world how “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are” in a TED speech watched more than twenty-million times. We convey a lot of information about ourselves, our status, and how we’re feeling through our posture, body language, and how we move to establish personal space.

How do confident people act, walk, and talk? You know it when you see it. Let’s look at an effective teacher – the Military. Drill and ceremony rehearsals, confidence courses, the “gas chamber,” where Soldiers and Marines are inoculated against the fear of being hit with “tear gas” through the experience of being exposed to it. On demolition ranges where they learn how to throw live hand-grenades – safely. Airborne school, where Soldiers are turned into Paratroopers, and on countless missions, deployments and real emergencies that challenge participants to control their emotions to keep fear in check.

Early in my Military Police career I witnessed how attitudes affected preparation, readiness, and performance. I watched a five foot three inch, hundred and ten pound women control her fear to subdue a violent man twice her size. Phrases I half-believed then I embrace completely now – “fake it till you make it”, “when in charge, take charge, and when you’re not, act as if you are.” Confidence is not a substitute for competence, but it trumps alternative ways to approach life.

Training can be designed to teach tasks that together form skills that Soldiers or business-people master before they are qualified. Drown Proofing is a good example. It begins as a series of easy-to-achieve tasks. Soldiers are taught how to stay afloat and to make a flotation device from their clothing. The training culminates with a fully-clothed soldier, complete with kevlar vest, helmet, rifle, and boots thrown into the water. To pass, they need to stay afloat, no style points – as long as they don’t panic, they’ll get through it. And that’s true for anything you do in life – don’t panic.  More dramatic than conventional drown-proofing, this image shows Marines inside a helicopter mock-up as it rotates into water – you can watch the entire video on youtube here. This specialized training increased the survival rate for helicopter passengers caught in a forced-landing on water by several hundred percent.

Marines a modular Amphibious Egress Tank

Lessons learned in the Military can be applied to business. Networking is to business what drown-proofing is to Marines. Research on networking conducted at Harvard University adds evidence on this topic.

“Basically, the more “powerful” the person, the less they view “networking” as a “Dirty” activity. The lower power the person, the more they view it as a shameful chore. One implication for practice is that, to foster the advancement and effectiveness of professionals at low hierarchical levels, organizations need to create opportunities for emergent forms of networking, as those who need instrumental  networking the most are the least likely to engage in it.”

People I work with don’t need to do more good things better, they need to stop doing one thing poorly or step-up in situations where senior leaders wouldn’t hesitate. Usually it’s a single self-defeating inaction, or belief that stops them from moving forward. Self-confidence is the most common element their focus can fix to achieve the results they want. Think about how this could apply to you.

Gavin de Becker points out that young circus elephants are tied to a post with heavy chains they can’t break. Over time, they learn to stop trying, and eventually, as adults, they can be restrained with the flimsiest rope. What ropes are holding you back? Are you afraid, or lack confidence, or self-worth? Learn to be fearless.

Please “Like” and share if you found this useful!

Paul’s talk – “Personal Branding and Digital Footprints” is a discussion about how people connect, learn, and grow. He introduces ideas and techniques you can apply to achieve your goals, enhance your career, and help other people along the way.

Paul Laherty leads Deloitte’s relationship with several major airlines. Over the past fifteen years he’s led teams in Sales, Marketing, and Finance at American Airlines, Advito, Travelocity, Diio, and Cornerstone Information Systems. Paul’s an instrument-rated pilot, writer, speaker, world-traveler, former Army Officer, a husband, and father.  He helps people and organizations achieve significance, travel safely, and think differently. Paul publishes at paullaherty.com, and is open to connecting on LinkedIn at LinkedIn/paullaherty, or twitter @paul_laherty.

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Lessons from the Costa Concordia

Update: the verdict is in – Captain Schettino is sentenced to sixteen years in prison for a disaster that cut 32 lives short. Here’s an interview with survivors reacting to the sentence from NBC.

This is a look back at the Costa Concordia during a two-week period when commercial transportation gave the media a lot to report on. AirAsia lost an Airbus A320 with 162 people onboard in the Java Sea. The Norman Atlantic, a ferry, suffered a fire on the auto deck off the coast of Greece enroute to Italy, while two other ships, the Ezadeen and the Blue Sky M, carrying over 1,000 refugees, were also abandoned to the Italian Navy. Days later the Hoegh Osaka, a car-carrier, ran aground off the Isle of Wight; the Cemfjord sank off the coast of Scotland – without a trace of the crew. A Norwegian carrier, the Bulk Jupiter, left one survivor from a crew of nineteen when it sank off the coast of Vietnam.

The Norman Atlantic had 478 passengers on the manifest, but it’s still unclear how many people were actually on board. No alarm sounded, and many passengers were alerted by other passengers, or the acrid smoke in their cabins. Once on deck they were greeted by pounding rain, water from cannons used to fight the fire, and forty-knot winds. Survivors were lifted to safety in rescue baskets from Italian Navy helicopters operated until the ship was emptied.

Norman Atlantic

Although more than ten people died, Norman Atlantic survivors were fortunate. The ship remained afloat throughout the rescue operation – not the case for passengers on the M.V. Sewol.

The MV Sewol sank off the South Korean coast on April 16, 2014. In that tragedy, hundreds of Korean school children were told to put their lifejackets on, but remain where they were inside the ship, to avoid increasing a list created by a sharp turn commanded by the crew. Incredibly the ship’s Captain reinforced the order to “stay put” even as he abandoned ship. Most of the students were found in the cafeteria when divers searched the ship in the days following the disaster. Now, Captain Lee, and eleven of his crew are facing murder charges in South Korea.

Traveler deaths in ferry and shipping disasters are far higher than those from commercial aircraft accidents. There are too many examples where crew-member instructions doom people who, left on their own, would have saved themselves. This is true for the next story too.

Armada

In January 2012, when the Costa Concordia ran aground off the Italian coast, Blake Miller was on-board. The cruise picked up passengers at several ports; Blake and his partner, Steve, boarded in Rome a few hours before the accident. Rather than provide a security briefing when new passengers were added, the ​briefing was scheduled for 3PM the next day. ​

Costa Concordia Upright

As they passed close to an Island off the Italian coast passengers felt an impact and sought direction from the crew. Earlier that day Steve reviewed safety materials in their cabin ​and noticed lifeboats were mounted on Deck 4, but now the crew instructed passengers to muster on Deck 10 and to don life-jackets. Blake and Steve were already ​on deck 7, but ​had ​a nagging feeling that a ship that size shouldn’t have a recognizable list so quickly. Something was seriously wrong, and they both thought the crew should be sending people to the lifeboats. After a long delay they decided it was time to go, and without grabbing cellphones or jackets, left their cabin and moved against the crowd on the quiet ship to find the lifeboats.

On the fourth deck it was obvious lifeboats would be deployed – and many without enough passengers to fill them. Blake and Steve boarded the closest one. Within minutes they were told to get out since the lifeboat couldn’t disengage from the heavily listing ship. They moved to another boat​ and bumped along the side before falling the final 30 feet into the ocean.

In the water they saw people in a small raft who had jumped from the ship, and they watched as more lifeboats were lowered. ​Unfortunately, by the time abandon ship was called an hour after the disaster, lifeboats on the Port side, the high-side, ​could not ​swing free of the ship and lowering them safely ​was impossible.

I asked Blake if their decision to ignore crew-member instructions saved their lives, he replied, “No, not in this case, but most of the passengers on Deck ​10 had to​ rappel down the side of the ship and jump into rafts in the ocean, or wait to ​be rescued by helicopter. Many were still waiting on board until after midnight.”

An accident in open-water might have had a different outcome. When the Costa Concordia rolled onto it’s side, the island prevented it from sinking. Blake’s experience demonstrates how powerful intuition can be to save us from harm. He and Steve overcame self-doubt and denial, but they also ignored ill-informed instructions from the ship’s crew.

Those were two powerful forces working against them – conscious denial slowed their progress towards the lifeboats, even as intuition told them they were in danger, but the crew slowed their self-rescue too. Authority figures gave them the wrong instructions. Blake’s skepticism, and a wind that caused the ship to shift to it’s other side convinced Blake that it was time to go. Steve was already there, but their actions demonstrate that when our conscious brains, and authorities take over, we can be slow to take life-saving action in our own defense.

 

 

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Managed Travel: Curriculum For High Risk Travelers

Each day an employee spends on the road increases their exposure to risk. They’re often in unfamiliar places, eating unfamiliar food, and operating on less sleep than they would get at home. Frequent travelers may have thousands of times more risk each year from exotic illnesses and food and water borne disease. Add this to language, clothes and hairstyles that set them apart from the crowd and they become targets for opportunity crimes from simple assault to kidnapping. Travelers must be their own first responders, and companies should send them into the world prepared for the most likely situations they will encounter. Here’s a simple list to form the foundation for traveler training.

  1. Review Duty of care / Duty of loyalty
  2. Risk management: population statistics and measurement tools.
  3. Travel risk drivers – causes, probabilities, and responses.
  4. Travelers need to know what resources are available for them, and how those resources will connect with them.
  5. How does your travel team know where you are?
    • Methods – traveler tracking via GDS Queue, GPS ring-fencing, traveler check-ins, active outbound calling to the traveler, VIP Security Teams.
  6. Medical, Travel, and Legal support available.
  7. Communication devices – Satellite phones, PLB’s.
  8. VIP kit bags – Vest, PBE, PLB, SAT phone, First Aid; including driver and VIP transport
  9. Personal travel kit.
  10. How to respond to a non-criminal crisis – consider type, location, and sensitivity to employee-level.
  11. Weather events.
  12. Accidents
    • Vehicle
    • Other accidents
  13. Illness – acute, persistent, poisoning.
  14. How to respond to a criminal crisis – Describe roles for people, locations, and traveler behavior.
    • Target selection.
    • Assault, Theft, Kidnapping, property crime.
    • Avoid or Respond.
    • Civil unrest.
    • Terrorism.
    • Threats, bombs, and assaults.
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Armored Attitude

Attitude is the most important ingredient for your survival and security. Survivors share a realistic belief about their capabilities and likely outcomes. Survivors have an “Armored Attitude.” Don’t confuse this with unbridled optimism from pom-pom waving cheerleaders. An Armored Attitude is a rare approach to adversity, but it’s extremely effective.

Awareness is another powerful ingredient. Awareness is the preparation and the dynamic evaluations people make as they move through space – often called situational awareness. Awareness isn’t sufficient to find a solution in high risk situations or events. Awareness is a starting point. High awareness gives you an edge and allows you to consider alternatives as risk increases, meanwhile attitude is the motivation layer that guides you to safety.

Survivors thrive because they understand that 9-1-1 is never immediate – it’s only a back-up. Survivors with an Armored Attitude understand that Police and Fire Fighters are Second Responders. You must be your own First Responder. Remember the Cheerleaders – they’re the one’s who let their guard down when the Cavalry shows up. Survivors don’t stop fighting while there are still choices to make.

In Tim Larkin’s, How to Survive the Most Critical 5 Seconds of your Life, he offers a thought experiment that asks how you would feel if a muscle-bound 300 pound man was paid to harm you? Tim doesn’t ask if you could defeat this opponent, only if you could “touch” him. It’s easy to imagine that you could put your hands on this guy, but harder for most people to envision walking away from the encounter. Tim teaches you how. It’s that attitude that gives you an edge. His program, TargetFocusTraining, teaches exceptional skills to average people and can help you develop an Armored Attitude.

Another great resource to help you develop an armored attitude comes from Tim Schmidt, the founder of U.S. Concealed Carry. Tim is an expert who knows how important attitude is. He has been a strong advocate for Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Dave Grossman’s “Bulletproof Mind.” Dave’s program educates people about personal defense techniques and ideas. Between the two of them, you’ll get a terrific education in the power of attitude.

Case studies demonstrate how planning can build an environment to create winners with an Armored Attitude. Southlake, Texas, a city with 35,000 residents has an incredible record in High School football. Southlake Carroll High School has won the Texas state 5A football title five times in the past ten years and three former Dragon’s suited up for the 2011 Superbowl. In the late ’90’s the Dragons outgrew their existing facility, but rather than divide their students between two High Schools, Carroll ISD kept 9th and 10th Graders together in the original building, while 11th and 12th grade students moved to a new “Senior” High School. From kindergarten to graduation students in the Carroll School District are Dragons – a unified mascot across Southlake established an enormous fan base. Dragon’s symbolize the entire city, not just their football team, and residents have high standards and higher expectations.

Another example may answer the question – Why are Marines so tough?  Organizational marketing drives their confidence and attitudes. Marines benefit from the same ingredients that make Southlake Carroll so tough. Individually Marines are evenly matched against US Army Infantry soldiers, but Marines have a different belief system. Every Marine is a Rifleman first, and that expectation is drilled into them from their first day. Marines are indoctrinated to feel like they’re part of an exclusive, neglected, and scrappy organization that can’t depend on anyone else for survival, and their mission profiles and history provide ample evidence to support those attitudes. Meanwhile, the Army lowers expectations and motivation by dividing its forces into three broad groups: Combat Arms (Infantry, Armor, Artillery, Cavalry, Engineers), Combat Support (Chemical, Military Police, Military Intelligence, Signal), and finally, Service Support (Medical Service, Quartermaster, Logistics, etc.). Expectations are stratified by design. Many Support soldiers believe they will not be needed to perform combat operations – “we won’t need to use our weapons” is a common attitude in the support ranks and contributes to lower motivation and performance in combat skills. Unarmed civilian contractors hired to perform many duties carried out by support units contribute to that belief system by serving as an existence proof that those thoughts are accurate. Army Warfighters are professional high achievers, but on balance, it probably takes fewer Marines to put more rounds on a target.

Violent weather, mechanical failures, bad luck, criminal mischief, and civil unrest swallow targets everyday on any part of the globe. No matter where a threat comes from or what form it may take, an Armored Attitude combined with good situational awareness will give you an edge that may be the difference between an interview with you than an interview about you.

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Locks, Vaults, and Fences

Locks are only a delaying mechanism. That’s it. They don’t keep bad guys out, they merely impede progress. Walls do the same thing, as do fences. Good security relies on layers of protection. Distance to separate a building from a street, a locked front door to slow entry, a hidden safe to protect documents or valuables. Each layer can be defeated, but each adds time for a response.

Valuable items can only be protected with an overwhelming response. Locks and vaults are not sufficient, yet most businesses think they are. Consider the “rooftop burglaries” by jewelry thieves in Texas who knocked off a series of jewelry stores over a period of months. They disabled sophisticated alarm systems and entered through holes they cut in the roof. Then they spent six to ten hours to cut through commercial grade safes before gaining entry to the valuables inside. It’s no surprise that Monday mornings keep every police force in the nation busy to complete damage and theft reports. That’s when business owners return to the office to find broken windows, missing merchandise and evidence of other crimes.

The US Federal Reserve Bank of New York has an engineering marvel beneath the massive building at 33 Liberty Street to house gold bullion for the United States and other countries. A vault constructed on the bedrock below lower Manhattan. Here’s a description from their documents:

“The gold also is secured by the vault’s design, which is a masterpiece of protective engineering. The vault is actually the bottom floor of a three-story bunker of vaults arranged like strongboxes stacked on top of one another. The massive walls surrounding the vault are made of a steel-reinforced structural concrete.”

“There are no doors into the gold vault. Entry is through a narrow 10-foot passageway cut in a delicately balanced, nine-feet-tall, 90-ton steel cylinder that revolves vertically in a 140-ton, steel-and-concrete frame. The vault is opened and closed by rotating the cylinder 90 degrees. An airtight and watertight seal is achieved by lowering the slightly tapered cylinder three-eighths of an inch into the frame, which is similar to pushing a cork down into a bottle. The cylinder is secured in place when two levers insert large bolts, four recessed in each side of the frame, into the cylinder. By unlocking a series of time and combination locks, Bank personnel can open the vault the next business day. The locks are under “multiple control”—no one individual has all the combinations necessary to open the vault.”

The Federal Reserve has a good system – they even have a dedicated, uniformed, armed protection force to provide security.

An armed response force is the element most companies neglect. Too often companies and individuals rely on government supplied police to fill that role. Corporate security teams rely on police departments to prioritize resources in their favor, but plaques and free lunches aren’t worth much when the police department is inundated and overtasked during and after a major local crisis. Enormous sums are spent to house and monitor valuables, but active defense might include an unarmed security officer in a blazer with a two-way radio, left without any means to produce a credible threat to a motivated opponent. When chaos rules, 9-1-1 forces become reporters, not responders. Organizations must plan to be self-sustaining and deliver integrated control over the entire security defense and response lifecycle.

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Practical Network Theory

Network theory is a Warfighter’s best friend. Model networks include nodes and links. Nodes can be measured based on the number of connections they have and the volume or relative importance of traffic carried on their links. The earliest battlefield applications brought about the modern COMSEC (Communications Security) practices. As a US Army Platoon Leader, I frequently held a company radio in one hand, and a Platoon radio in the other. Good practice and sound judgment encouraged short transmissions to prevent interception, but knowledge about the message isn’t required to determine how important each node is. It wouldn’t take a trained analyst to determine that my frequent communications with nine other vehicles, and periodic transmissions to another, would give me away as a battlefield leader, and also reveal the identity and location of the Company Headquarters.

Sophisticated Law enforcement agencies apply these theories to create drug distribution maps and develop a street gang’s organization chart. The CIA, FBI, and other Department of Justice agencies use electronic data to identify al qaeda operatives. Once a node is identified law enforcement or combat units will search for communication traffic with other nodes and determine if attached nodes are peers, subordinates or leaders.

In Afghanistan US Forces can combat insurgent attacks by mapping the physical network. Unfortunately, it’s not an instant process, and insurgents must be ID’d, then followed. Global Hawks and other airborne surveillance assets are used to track the locations of known operatives. Once they enter a building, the location is marked and as others come and go, they are tagged and tracked too, to build a map of locations frequented by operatives over time. Through this process US Forces are able to locate an enemy that fights with guerrilla tactics that make traditional battlefield intelligence gathering practices obsolete.

Temporal overlay is another technique that provides information about enemy activity. When events, separated by time, are mapped at once or at an accelerated pace on a map, intelligence analysts can draw conclusions that are not apparent from single events. See this time lapse map of IED’s in Afghanistan for a demonstration of this effect. Another resource, The LA Times, does a terrific job cataloging homicides and you can find their map here.

Network Theory affects you and is being applied to your movements and communications. Global citizens are being monitored, measured and evaluated by news organizations and Government agencies through programs established to reveal connections among them. The National Security Agency, NSA, established a research center for this purpose and it’s likely that intelligence about future terror operations will be captured in real time by this organization.

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Business Continuity and Asset Protection

Sound protection for data, Intellectual Property, real property, and other day-to-day assets companies and senior management must secure demands that plans and procedures recognize threats posed by employees with access to those assets. Security managers tend to spend effort on low probability events including, tornadoes, fire, civil unrest and others while ignoring the risks their own employees create.

In 2009 a programmer at Goldman Sachs stole code used by the bank to run their high-speed trading operations. Sergey Aleynikov worked as a programmer at Goldman Sachs, and left his job with “hundreds of thousands of lines” of source code. Although he was prosecuted, the charges were thrown out. From the Guardian, “Because Aleynikov did not ‘assume physical control’ over anything when he took the source code, and because he did not thereby ‘deprive [Goldman] of its use,’ Aleynikov did not violate the [National Stolen Property Act],’ the court wrote in its decision for United States v Aleynikov.”

More recently Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was betrayed by a security staffer who carried a bomb into a staff meeting. Syria is conducting a war and the senior leadership team has been holding frequent planning meetings. This is an organization that is already on the highest alert, yet the blast killed Defense Minister Dawood Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Assef Shawkat (al-Assad’s brother-in-law), and Hasan Turkmani, a security adviser and assistant vice president.

In case you think Syria is an extreme example consider this case. In December, 2009, another suicide bomber attacked a CIA operations center in Khost, Afghanistan which killed eight Americans. Most were CIA agents. Like the Syrian attack, the suspect was well-known to the people he targeted. A week after the bombing, NBC news published an article that identified the attacker as Humam Khalid Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, 36, a Jordanian Doctor and al-Qaida sympathizer from Zarqa. The CIA planned to use him to infiltrate Al-Qaida as a double-agent.

Internal threats are real and have potential to cause serious damage. And none of the expensive firewalls, access control systems, alarms, fire-suppression, locks, gates, fences and security systems companies are already sustaining can prevent loss from a Trojan Horse. You must consider ways to compartmentalize data and assets and limit the damage caused by theft or malicious destruction employees can do to a company or organization.

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Duty of Care and Duty of Loyalty

Duty of Care is the idea that Corporations are responsible for the security of their employees during travel and when engaged in activities that support the company’s interests. The European Union’s Duty of Care Act is the most prominent regulation in Europe to codify this requirement. The EU spells out how companies should behave regarding employee safety and security, but the United Kingdom took this a step further with the UK Manslaughter Act that allows companies to be held criminally liable for harm that come to their employees. The regulation applies to UK employees abroad, or the non-UK Company employees while they are in the UK to conduct business. These regulations jump-started the Duty of Care industry in Europe and North American Corporations are still playing catch-up.

Duty of Care describes the set of behaviors, planning, and actions companies must take to safeguard their employees. Duty of Loyalty is the concept of employee compliance with their employers’ efforts on their behalf. If a company makes a car service available, or requires employees to meet minimum safety guidelines, Duty of Loyalty is the force that compels an employee to meet those standards. Companies that go out of their way to create a high quality of life for during employee travel and are proactive about serving travelers on the road will generate much higher loyalty. Companies undermine their employees loyalty through cumbersome or overly-restrictive policies and should strive to strike a balance that rewards loyal behavior while not driving the employee to another company.

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The Safest Room in Every Hotel

You will find the safest rooms on the third and fourth floors away from the front of the building and at least one room away from elevators or stairs. Why? Simple – fire. The most common, fire truck carried, tallest, three-section ladder only extends forty-feet, and weighs 220 pounds. Fire can spread through stairwells and elevator shafts quickly so a buffer room is a good idea and high rooms cannot be reached with most ladders.

Unfortunately terrorism is another risk hotel guests face; room locations away from the building’s main entrance tend to offer better protection against blasts, overpressure shockwaves and projectiles. Blasts occur disproportionately on the street level in front of the lobby entrance. In high risk locations, it makes sense to keep your drapes closed (to catch broken glass), and sleep on the bed away from windows (when two beds are present). You should also remember to carry a small doorstop with you and secure your room when you’re in it.

It’s easy to remember to stay low in case of fire, but most people don’t understand how quickly the super-heated gas a few feet above the floor can cause severe burns to delicate lung tissue. Think about the heat you feel from an oven at 350°F? Now think about what one deep breath of air heated to 900°F could do? If you do need to leave your room during a fire, don’t use elevators and don’t leave skin exposed; put a wet, cotton t-shirt around your head, and a pair of cotton socks (not synthetic) on your hands as an impromptu pair of gloves. Touch doors and doorknobs with the back of your hand before you open them, and don’t stand in front of the opening until you know it’s safe to do so.

A few more hotel tips – it’s a good habit to make your first trips to the lobby via the primary and alternate emergency exits closest to your room (you’ll be familiar with them should you need to use them in the dark).

Never take metal keys with you when you leave the hotel – leave them at the front desk and have a staff member give it back to you when you return. And don’t leave room keys in sleeves marked with your room number or the hotel name. Always leave a note addressed to yourself or a colleague at the front desk when you leave by yourself. List your intended destination, who you’re meeting with and when you intend to return. This will give potential rescuers an enormous head start should something unplanned happen.

This isn’t a complete list, but adopting these habits will give you an advantage if you’re ever faced with an emergency or crisis while you’re away from home.

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