Jim Hutton: On Call International CSO On Corporate Travel After Paris & Mali

BTN editor-in-chief Elizabeth West spoke with On Call International chief security officer Jim Hutton about the corporate travel industry’s response and reaction to the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 129 people. Then, a hostage crisis in Bamako, Mali, left 29 dead, and at press time, manhunts for terror suspects were ongoing in Brussels and Paris. A follow-up email exchange with Hutton elicited information about the threat of terror attacks and necessary security measures for business travelers.

Has the situation settled since Nov. 13, or are companies still handling the fallout from the Paris attacks?

As you might expect, the business response has been very much divided in what measures firms are taking to protect their people and assets. That ranges from an outright ban on travel and removing some personnel to business as usual but with an abundance of caution.

Has the situation settled, though?

The original activity was around accounting for personnel right away, doing a welfare-and-whereabouts check. There is a lot of great technology out there now, and a lot of firms have become much more sophisticated in this space to be able to do this quickly. At this point, there’s very high probability that [organizations] have accounted for everyone, although you do have people who go off on their own on maybe a little holiday trip and they aren’t thinking about checking in with their employers. I would suspect some firms are still working the delta to make sure everyone is accounted for. Beyond that, clearly the information and notification stream will be a constant drum beat in terms of alert messaging, email blasts, text messages, conference calls, whatever it might be to provide security reminders to travelers and briefings to crisis management teams to modify policy. Those are the kinds of efforts going on now.

How well did companies perform with their crisis management plans over that weekend? What could have been improved?

The larger firms that practice these things performed pretty well. Challenges creeped in where we had leisure travelers, for whom this is very new and scary. Our academic clients [had their] study abroad programs, which introduce additional complexity around structure and process. But most organizations are doing a much better job of providing ongoing communications and updates. The fact that our call volume around welfare-and-whereabouts checks was pretty minimal suggests that a lot of the programs are maturing in this space.

Is that because everyone is carrying a mobile device?

That’s a huge enabler. In addition: the ability to get to the Net and utilize Facebook and social media if it were from a laptop or PC in an Internet cafe. Those types of tools for a quick welfare check have been increasingly important. It’s a nice belt-and-suspenders approach where you would send a message through all channels—personal mobile devices, Facebook, Twitter and others—to make sure you get the right coverage.

What were clients asking of On Call International? Did you have any hands-on interventions in Paris?

Happy to say we didn’t have to specifically move anyone. Some clients wanted updates and wanted us to help them put context around the situation. It was a very dynamic event that happened in multiple locations. Once people began to understand what was going on, the conversation shifted to the knock-on effect. Were the borders closed? Were the airports open? Should we drive through Belgium? Some of our conversations centered on the “what’s next” piece once the initial shock wore off.

Beyond that, the conversation shifted to continuity of operations. Should I stay in France? What other locations are of concern? Finally, we always encourage our clients to think about what’s on the horizon in the next two or three weeks. What might be worth reconsidering based on the events we’ve seen? There is a very logical flow for the need for additional updating and awareness.

I assume there is quite a difference between companies that have official security managers versus those in which travel management, HR or some other department manages traveler security. Did you see a difference in crisis management success?

Organizations that typically have an in-house vehicle to help manage crisis—whether managed by HR, a security officer or risk officer—tend to be able to provide organization-specific context around the guidance. Let me give you an example: When I was with Procter & Gamble, [employees] really relied on our communications center to help [them] truly understand what events meant in their particular context—whether Paris, Western Europe or people who were booked for travel. We were able to put almost a personal touch on that with a drumbeat of updates and a channel to answer questions or concerns they had or their families had while they were away. So [it was] a very high-touch outcome that our employees really appreciated in a number of different emergencies.

For organizations that are less formal and have fewer resources, frankly, which is the case for a lot of our clients, the opportunity to take things from a provider directly or without context requires more engagement to [make it relevant] for their employees. That time and number of touches are obviously going to work against you in terms of the ability to educate people, get them comfortable in a crisis. That’s the strategic difference, although I would say [organizations with fewer resources] can hopefully get to the same place. We are seeing more of our clients [that don’t meet those more sophisticated criteria] still doing a good job.

That said, there were a lot of folks at the recent Overseas Security Advisory Council meeting who took absolutely frantic calls from both downstream travelers and their management. These companies had failed to make the investment in time and money to neutralize some of this. But … the awareness has gone up.

Business travel will be affected for some time; security has intensified in many regions. Is this a lasting situation or a short-term reaction?

Among respondents who weighed in on an Overseas Security Advisory Council survey about increased security in France and Western Europe due to terrorist activities, about 40 percent said it would last about a week. Another 26 percent thought we would see this posture for at least a month. Beyond a month, 18 percent suggested we were looking at a midterm duration for countermeasures and procedures.

Why are corporations reacting this way after Paris and not after incidents in Beirut or other places where we know this is also happening?

My personal opinion has a few components: There is such a critical mass around Paris and tremendous media presence and a lot of concentration of corporations and leisure travelers. There is also a geopolitical piece to this. France has had an interesting history from a colonial standpoint and an intervention standpoint in Syria and Lebanon. My third point, when you draw these comparisons with places like Lebanon, where car bombs went off a couple of weeks ago, there is a little bit of terrorism fatigue among the media and the public around certain markets. We’ve been reading about this since 1982. A car bomb in Beirut is tragic, but it’s not new, and that contributes to the lack of visibility or the lack of urgency that some people might bring to [similar] events in these markets.

But the corporate reaction: Is the difference in response tracked to media coverage or something else?

I’ll go back to 30 years of history in Beirut. I’ll respectfully suggest that a lot of corporates have reduced their presence in Lebanon and markets like it, so there isn’t as much at stake for the larger players. They are using third parties to get work done: distributors, local Lebanese organizations that have jumped in and filled that space. There’s a wonder of commercial activity in Beirut. Lebanese people are all over the world conducting business and they’re great at it, and a lot companies are leveraging that expertise in Lebanon and places like it [so they can] conduct business at arms’ length.

What is On Call International’s advice for continued travel into and through Paris?

We want to be careful in that space. At the end of the day, from a duty-of-care standpoint, it’s the employer’s responsibility to make that call. That said, it’s important to provide perspective on what we’re seeing and [what we’re getting] from our sources to help [clients] form that opinion. It’s important for people to travel from a cultural standpoint, from a business standpoint. I’ve hopefully built up credibility with them to start from ‘yes’—sometimes heavily caveated. Ultimately, [we] take a very integrated and cross-functional approach to understand the critical business need for travel to a market that is under threat, at least for the near term. You think about that continuum of response of an initial travel ban and then a relaxation, a phased approach. We understand the client’s need to go to places and do things to engage globally.

What about overall policy changes as a result of Paris and the ongoing volatility that seems to be in the air?

A lot of organizations are going to take a good hard look at duty of care. This is a legal requirement creeping into this conversation more and more. Duty of care attaches a cultural and legal responsibility to do a few of things: 1) To have a well-defined policy and procedure around managing travel; 2) that you have done training and development of a crisis management function; and 3) communication.

From the moment an employee joins an organization all the way through sitting in the hotel room in Paris on that Friday night—and afterward—you have to be able to communicate expectations and provide support. And beyond the legal requirement, it’s the right thing to do.

Hutton’s Insights After The Mali Hostage Crisis

• Attack tactics remain similar to Mumbai and Paris, whether it's al-Qaida, ISIS, Boko Haram, or another group.
• The attackers' goals are mass casualties and major press.
• Before their trips, travelers should to register with their embassies, reconfirm travel plans and refine their emergency communication plans, including a shelter-in-place plan, as logistics may become difficult and/or delayed.
• Corporations and travelers should expect copycat threats or actions.