Traveller tracking tools can improve employee safety with accurate location sharing. Learn how to track employee locations in real time.
Whether employees are attending short-haul site visits or global conferences, traveller tracking technology means you’ll know where your team is at every stage. This ensures when local situations arise, from weather warnings to schedule changes, you’ll be able to provide immediate assistance at a distance.
Employee safety is a top priority for companies, with a GBTA study finding it’s a key factor (40%) for companies when choosing a travel programme, followed by cost savings (19%) and technology integration (11%). And with the right location sharing tool, you can address all three at once.
In this guide, we’ll explain the full benefits of staff location tracking, as well as how it works. We’ll also detail how to view employee locations using real-time data, while protecting their privacy. Armed with the latest technology, your company will gain new business travel insights that can help you meet all duty of care requirements.
A ‘travel tracker’ is a catch-all name for tech-forward tools used by companies to monitor and support their team members during business trips. While not all travel tracking apps offer the same features, most use real-time data to manage employee locations and itineraries for improved support.
These location sharing tools go a step beyond standard flight trackers, which follow the progress of single flights and provide alerts about location, status, and arrival times. They also provide full visibility over flight itineraries, hotel reservations, ground transportation, and other details.
For businesses, employee safety is the primary goal of traveller tracking. When you’re able to follow the precise, real-time locations of all travelling employees, you’ll be primed to react swiftly with targeted assistance during emergencies or delays.
Additional benefits of business travel visibility tools include:
Knowing a business traveller’s specific geolocation ensures that your business can communicate with them rapidly when needed. This might be for simple things, such as notifying the traveller of a cancelled client meeting while they’re enroute.
It’s crucial in times of crisis, such as natural disasters, where power outages disrupt email capabilities. Travel tracking systems can be linked with company-preferred methods of communication, such as SMS messaging and in-app alerts.
Business travel management isn’t just about booking flights and accommodation – it also means ensuring the well-being and safety of each employee as part of a robust duty of care policy.
Knowing where your workforce is helps meet your duty of care requirements. Using assistance apps and real-time location sharing, employees can check in when needed to verify their locations. Traveller locators also come with built-in safety measures to flag real-time risks, providing proactive alerts when there are extreme weather events and security issues. And when local incidents occur, your organisation can immediately provide needed support without delay, including evacuation where needed.
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Apart from ensuring business traveller safety, travel tracking makes the booking and financial management process more efficient. Systematic sharing tools provide comprehensive traveller data for real-time monitoring of travel expenses. The best traveller tracking tools integrate seamlessly with your existing travel management platforms, enabling data sharing across travel, safety and expense areas.
Built-in policies ensure that travelling employees are spending within predefined budget parameters, streamlining the approvals process. This reduces the administrative time spent on expense tracking, reporting, and compliance.
These tools give an added layer of support to employees, who may feel some business trip anxiety particularly when travelling far from home or on their own to international destinations. This support is vital. An Opinium survey of UK business travellers found that 60% believed their employers could be doing more to keep them safe, and 69% said they would decline a business trip where safety was not prioritised.
A traveller tracking app lets workers know that the organisation is watching out for them and is ready to assist when the situation calls for it. Travel disruption alerts mitigate the risk of frustrating delays, keeping itineraries running smoothly and according to plan.
Although often associated with corporations, traveller tracking apps are useful for businesses of any size. If your company’s employees embark on frequent business trips, it’s likely that you’ll derive some benefit from a traveller tracking tool.
There are two different levels of tracking technology available to businesses.
The first involves real-time travel visibility tools, powered with specialty data aggregating software that integrates with booking platforms. When employees book their flight, hotel, or car rental through an integrated platform, details are automatically pulled into the system which then gives automated updates about their current travel status.
Then, when on-the-ground situations arise that could impact traveller safety, the system sends an alert. Companies can quickly get in touch with their employees, requesting a check-in or offering further assistance through approved channels.
A second, more comprehensive type of tracking tool uses live GPS or phone tracking technology to follow employee movements. These are typically used in settings where risk assessments include a chance of political unrest or health emergencies.
Traveller tracking relies on processing and storing vast quantities of business traveller data. It’s crucial that you follow all relevant data protection laws, such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, India’s Digital Personal Protection Act, or Australia’s Privacy Principles.
In the United States, rather than a set of unified federal privacy laws, data protection varies from state to state – examples include the California Consumer Privacy Act and Virginia Data Protection Act.
In addition to data handling concerns, some employees will be unsure about the personal privacy implications of having their movements tracked. This is one of the drivers behind a low uptake of travel safety apps – World Travel Protection reports that although 70% of business travellers surveyed reported their company encouraging the use of one, just 30% actively downloaded it.
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In addition to complying with data protection laws like GDPR and others, location sharing tools come with multiple security features, including multi-factor authentication and data encryption. They require explicit consent from users and limit data to approved purposes.
There’s a misconception that traveller tracking apps are used to follow employee movements, when instead they’re designed to notify workers of nearby incidents.
Before using any travel visibility tools, it’s important to explain how they work, what’s involved, and obtain full consent from each business traveller. And with 75% of workers expressing some concern about safety when travelling for business, ultimately most wish to feel supported on the road.
To encourage adoption, you’ll need to strike a balance between meeting duty of care obligations and protecting employee privacy by choosing encrypted, compliant apps.
To maximise the benefits of location sharing systems, look for business travel apps that come with features like the following:
Your company has a moral, and often legal, obligation to ensure traveller safety and well-being, and you have the duty of care policy to support this. But without access to traveller data, these policies are merely theoretical. And traditional itinerary management methods like spreadsheets and self-check-ins have a time lag that can cause critical communication lapses when travellers need your support the most.
There’s a wealth of tools out there to help gain greater visibility over travel plans, but one of the most comprehensive is Traxo. When you activate the Traxo feature in Tripeden.com for Business, you’ll receive a full overview of traveller locations, in real time. This travel location tool integrates with travel management systems, aggregating data from traveller bookings.
With Traxo’s help, you’ll be able to locate business travellers quickly to enable rapid response as needed, all while providing proactive support. Traxo also simplifies business travel management by integrating with services like Expensify to sync travel bookings with costs.
After selecting and implementing the right travel monitoring technology, you can make the most of it with these best-practice tips.
What are your objectives when using travel tracking apps? Do you want to strengthen your duty of care compliance, streamline travel management processes, or all of the above? Determine your goals and clearly define how the new system will achieve them.
The best travel tracking tools work together seamlessly with your existing travel management solutions. This creates a consistent, user-friendly experience that travelling employees will feel most comfortable with.
Once you’ve defined your policy and selected a system, explain it clearly to employees, including the security advantages. Facilitate training sessions explaining how to use the new location-sharing technology, with ongoing communication about how employee location data is used and protected. Finally, address any privacy concerns by making geolocation sharing an opt-in process.
It’s essential to use certified monitoring software obtained through a registered, verified vendor that follows all legal regulations related to data security and employee right to privacy. Your company should also perform regular audits regarding reliability and compliance, along with suggested software updates to keep systems in line with the latest security features.
While useful in many situations, location sharing tools still require human oversight. For example, if employees don’t use approved booking tools, their itineraries may not sync with the system. Additionally, travel disruption and safety alerts may be delayed when travelling in areas with poor connectivity. Be sure to keep these limitations in mind when automating your systems.
When your company deals with a travelling workforce, you need modern, innovative ways to ensure their security, and the best business travel management apps provide a comprehensive solution. With Tripeden.com for Business, you’ll gain full visibility over itineraries and receive real-time updates to help you meet duty of care requirements. Manage itineraries as they progress to improve safety response times, all while delivering a better user experience.
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