Summer is the season when most people travel abroad on holiday, and they can go to all sorts of different countries. However, what many people don’t seem to consider is that a lot of the countries that they may visit are nowhere near as safe as the US. They have different laws and rules, and there are all sorts of reasons that dangerous situations can arise.
Employees who travel need to know the rules as well; if you are the HR person or coordinator of employee travel safety abroad, know the do’s and don’ts and work with your employees on travel safety and travel security (which aren’t the same things). For instance, if an employee should happen to visit Saudi Arabia tell them – do NOT take photographs of government buildings or military installations. Don’t photograph women in the street – and it’s not a good idea to photograph men, either. Don’t make disparaging remarks about the Royal Family or the country’s flag. Don’t drink alcohol in public. Don’t carry any drugs. Don’t take any sausages with you. Most of those things can get you thrown in jail for a few weeks.
An employee wouldn’t imagine that taking photographs of a building could get him or her thrown in jail. Smuggling drugs carries the death penalty. It’s forbidden to import pork into the country. Oh, and it’s illegal to be transgender. The basic rule for your employees: know the culture BEFORE leaving the plane and be respectful of the culture, even if the habits, laws, and customs might be more than a little strange.
Easy To Fall Foul Of The Laws
Drug smuggling aside, it would be fairly easy to fall foul of some of the other laws, and this is why you need the FoneTrac travel safety app on your mobile or tablet. Saudi Arabia is just one country, but it is a good example of the sorts of laws that you might find elsewhere, and more to the point the fact that you could do or say something that is perfectly acceptable in the US, but gets you thrown in jail in another country.
The FoneTrac travel safety app has a panic button and all you need to do if you are in trouble is to press it. This alerts the IMG GlobalSecur backend which is staffed by real people who can provide remote assistance combined with support on the ground in an emergency. For instance, if you get caught with pork sausages, you will need the services of a lawyer in Saudi Arabia and the IMG GlobalSecur people can help you with that.
The FoneTrac travel safety app also lets you update your location as you travel. This is recorded on the IMG GlobalSecur map system, and you can update it as often as you wish. Your location is monitored continually and if the system identifies any sort of problem occurring, or about to occur, in the place where you are, it will send you an alert so that you can take appropriate action.
FoneTrac works with any smartphone – iPhone or Android – and all you need to do is download the app, enroll in IMG GlobalSecur, and you are good to go.
Photo credit: kkmarais via Foter.com / CC BY