Duty of care for field-heavy programmes
Risk briefings, traveller tracking, escalation trees and the protocols that protect both your people and your organisation.
By Tulla Operations Desk
Duty of care is not a document; it is the ability to know where every traveller is, reach them within minutes, and make a defensible decision when something goes wrong. For organisations with field-heavy programmes — NGOs, development teams, energy and infrastructure, research organisations, journalism — it is operationally non-negotiable and increasingly a contractual requirement from donors and insurers.
The legal exposure is real. An organisation that cannot demonstrate a documented, tested duty-of-care framework is exposed both reputationally and financially when something goes wrong. The good news is that a workable framework is more about discipline than money — most of the cost is in the protocols and the rehearsal, not in expensive technology.
Three things every programme needs
- Pre-travel risk briefing matched to destination and traveller profile, not a generic country sheet
- Real-time traveller tracking with check-in protocols appropriate to the risk level
- A documented escalation tree, tested twice a year with a tabletop exercise
Travel insurance that actually responds
Generic travel insurance covers lost bags and delayed flights. Field-heavy programmes need policies that include emergency medical evacuation with a named provider, security extraction where relevant, kidnap-and-ransom cover for higher-risk geographies, repatriation of remains, and a 24/7 assistance line that picks up in under three rings and speaks the languages your staff speak. We help clients select cover that matches their actual risk profile, not a templated package.
Check-in cadence, not surveillance
Daily check-ins for high-risk locations, weekly for moderate, exception-only for low-risk. The traveller knows the protocol, the operations centre knows the schedule, and silence triggers an escalation — not a wait-and-see. Check-ins should be lightweight: a single message confirming location and status, not a form. The point is to know quickly when something is wrong, not to micromanage.
The escalation tree on the fridge
When an incident happens at 3am on a Saturday, no one will read a 40-page crisis manual. They will look for the one-page tree that says: who calls who, who has authority to spend, who briefs the family, who briefs the donor, who briefs the press. Print it. Share it. Test it. Update it after every incident, real or simulated.
What we do for clients
We coordinate pre-travel briefings, integrate with our clients' tracking systems where they exist, manage the assistance-provider relationship, and run the operational side of an incident so the client's leadership can focus on the people, the family and the wider response. The travel desk should not be the bottleneck on a bad day.
