Corporate Manslaughter.

Do you know where all of your staff are, right this minute? Could you contact them on mass if there was an emergency? Ae you looking after them, body and soul? Are you prepared to go to court because your travel policy for duty of care didn't tick the right boxes? Questions like these come up every day as employees travel, become more mobile and need to go to more than just capital cities to do business. The recent Australia, New Zealand GBTA conference was awash with duty of care, mobile connectivity and the consequences of not having either well set up.

In 2008 the UK passed a duty of care act to protect employees making corporations responsible for their safety and their working environment. The big question in all of this, concerns the work environment which no longer means the corner office, with technology giving companies freedom to move and work from anywhere, anytime. You know a government is serious when they don't sugar coat the name and in fact throw down the gauntlet calling it "The Corporate Manslaughter Act", making it sound much more menacing and confronting.

For many it was seen as a vicarious liability because of the difficulty in managing remote staff and the past lack of technology being a hurdle to rounding out a duty of care policy with the employee at top of mind. The act highlights that responsibility sits with the employer and states where a corporation's activities cause a person's death and the failure was because of a breach that falls far below what can reasonably be expected of the organisation, then the company will be prosecuted.

How long it takes for a similar act to be made law in Australia is uncertain but the concerns around employee safety are probably justified considering the nature of corporate travel today. A recent discussion with a resource company highlighted the fact that what they took out of the ground was running out in the so called "safe" countries and the ice fields of the northern continents and the jungles of Africa and South America beckoned. From finding trustworthy transport to safety in camps it behoves such companies to have failsafe policies backed by technology that spans the medias in regards to communication along with safe guards for the wellbeing of the employee.

OH&S policies used to round out to the person responsible for the medical kit stacked with band aids but it now claims company directors as responsible for their employees whenever they are doing company work and as we all know that work line is no longer blurred but invisible as we stay connected and work 24/7. Will there be a time when home offices, cafes, transport facilities and hotel rooms need to pass OH&S working standards?

Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings was the first organisation convicted and sentenced under the Manslaughter Act and fined $750,000 for the death of one of its employees.
The police said CGH had a “cavalier attitude” to health and safety and that it used “out-dated working methods”. The final straw being a small company, CGH is likely to go into liquidation.

Do you know where your staff are, right now? Do you know what they are doing? Are they safe?