When a natural disaster strikes abroad, the immediate priority is to confirm where your travelling employees are, assess their safety, and activate your emergency response plan. Speed matters, but so does structure. Companies that handle these situations well are those that have already built the right systems, contacts, and protocols before any crisis occurs. The sections below walk through the key questions every travel risk manager should be able to answer.
What steps should companies take before a natural disaster strikes?
Before a natural disaster occurs, companies should establish a formal travel risk management framework that includes pre-travel briefings, real-time traveller tracking, emergency communication protocols, and vetted response partners. Preparation is what separates a controlled response from a reactive scramble when conditions deteriorate rapidly.
The foundation of effective pre-disaster preparation is knowing where your people are at all times. This means maintaining live itinerary data, not just booking records. Travel risk managers need to know which employees are in which country, what their planned movements are, and how to reach them immediately if conditions change.
Beyond tracking, preparation involves several practical steps:
- Pre-travel risk briefings: Employees should receive destination-specific risk assessments before departure, covering natural disaster risks alongside security and medical considerations.
- Emergency contact protocols: Every traveller should know exactly who to call and how to reach them, including out-of-hours contacts.
- Defined escalation procedures: Internal teams need clear decision trees for when to escalate, who has authority to authorise an evacuation, and what the approval process looks like.
- Vetted provider relationships: Ground transport, medical assistance, and aviation partners should be identified and contracted in advance, not sourced under pressure during an active crisis.
- Travel policy alignment with ISO 31030: Structuring your travel risk management approach around recognised international standards helps ensure you are covering the right areas systematically.
Companies that complete this groundwork find that when a natural disaster does strike, the response becomes a matter of executing a plan rather than building one from scratch.
How do you locate employees during a natural disaster abroad?
During a natural disaster abroad, companies locate employees through a combination of real-time travel tracking software, direct communication via mass notification systems, and coordination with local ground teams. Relying on a single method creates dangerous gaps, particularly when mobile networks are disrupted or employees are in remote areas.
Business traveller tracking works most effectively when it is built into the pre-travel process. When employees register their itineraries in a tracking platform before departure, risk managers can see their last known location and planned movements even if direct communication fails. This gives the operations team a starting point for any search or welfare check.
Technology-based location methods
Travel tracking software that integrates with booking data, GPS, and check-in functionality gives risk managers a real-time picture of where personnel are located. Platforms that combine tracking with risk intelligence allow teams to cross-reference employee locations against the affected zone of a natural disaster and prioritise who needs immediate contact.
Human-led location methods
Technology alone is not always sufficient. When infrastructure fails, local ground contacts become essential. Trusted local partners who understand the terrain, speak the language, and have established relationships in the area can locate and reach employees when digital tools cannot. This local capability is particularly important in remote or severely affected zones where communications are unreliable.
The most effective approach combines both: automated tracking and mass communication tools to account for employees quickly, backed by local human networks to reach those who cannot be contacted through standard channels.
What does duty of care require when a natural disaster occurs?
Duty of care during a natural disaster requires employers to take all reasonable steps to protect the safety and wellbeing of travelling employees. In practice, this means actively monitoring the situation, communicating with affected staff, providing access to emergency assistance, and facilitating evacuation where necessary. Passive monitoring is not sufficient.
The legal and moral dimensions of duty of care travel policy apply continuously, not only when a trip is booked. Once a natural disaster is identified in a destination where employees are present, the organisation has an active obligation to respond. This includes:
- Confirming the welfare and location of all personnel in the affected area
- Providing clear, accurate information to employees about the situation and their options
- Facilitating access to medical assistance if employees are injured
- Arranging or supporting evacuation when the environment becomes unsafe
- Documenting all actions taken in case of future legal review
Duty of care also extends to the quality of information provided. Sending a generic alert that does not reflect the specific conditions in an employee’s location does not meet the standard. Risk managers should ensure that travel risk alerts are specific, timely, and actionable, giving employees the information they need to make safe decisions.
Companies operating internationally should also be aware that duty of care obligations do not end at national borders. Employees travelling for business purposes are covered regardless of where they are located.
How does emergency evacuation work for employees affected by a natural disaster?
Emergency evacuation for employees affected by a natural disaster involves assessing the risk level, identifying the safest available exit routes, and coordinating transport, whether by ground convoy, charter aircraft, or a combination of both, based on what conditions allow. The process is dynamic and must adapt as the situation changes on the ground.
Evacuation planning starts with understanding the specific circumstances. A natural disaster affecting a coastal city presents different options than one affecting an inland region with damaged road infrastructure. The evacuation approach needs to reflect the actual conditions, not a generic template.
Key stages in a well-managed evacuation include:
- Situation assessment: Determine what routes and transport options are viable given current conditions.
- Personnel accounting: Confirm the location and status of all employees before movement begins.
- Movement planning: Match each group to the most appropriate transport option, whether individual transfers, group coaches, or charter flights.
- Local coordination: Activate ground teams who understand border procedures, road conditions, and local logistics.
- Continuous monitoring: Track movements in real time and adjust plans as conditions evolve.
- Arrival confirmation: Verify safe arrival at each destination before standing down the operation.
Charter aviation is often the fastest option when ground routes are compromised, with capacity that can scale to move large groups in a single operation. Ground convoys remain essential for cross-border movements where airfields are unavailable or inaccessible. In complex situations, both are used together across a coordinated operation.
Who should manage the response to a natural disaster affecting travelling staff?
The response to a natural disaster affecting travelling staff should be managed by a dedicated crisis team that includes the travel risk manager, HR or people operations, senior leadership with decision-making authority, and a specialist external emergency response partner with 24/7 operational capability. No single internal function has the full range of skills and resources required to manage this alone.
Internal teams provide essential context: they know the employees, understand the business priorities, and can communicate with leadership and families. But managing an active evacuation across multiple countries, coordinating charter aircraft, liaising with local ground teams, and monitoring a fast-changing security situation simultaneously requires specialist operational depth that most organisations do not hold in-house.
The travel risk manager typically leads internal coordination, acting as the central point of contact between affected employees, leadership, and the external response partner. Clear escalation paths should already be defined so that decisions about evacuation authorisation, media response, and family communication can be made quickly without ambiguity.
What makes this work is preparation. Organisations that have established relationships with a travel security consulting partner before a crisis occurs are in a significantly stronger position. The response partner already understands the client’s structure, employee locations, and approved procedures, which removes critical delays when time is short.
What should companies do after employees return from a natural disaster?
After employees return from a natural disaster, companies should conduct welfare checks, provide access to psychological support, debrief the response operation, and update travel risk policies based on lessons identified. The return of personnel is not the end of the duty of care obligation.
Employees who have experienced a natural disaster abroad may be physically unharmed but psychologically affected. Normalising access to mental health support and making it easy to request help, without stigma, is an important part of post-incident care. This applies to the employees themselves and, in some cases, to their families.
From an operational perspective, every significant incident is also an opportunity to improve. A structured debrief should cover:
- What worked well in the response and why
- Where gaps or delays occurred and what caused them
- Whether tracking and communication tools performed as expected
- Whether the external response partner delivered effectively
- What changes to travel policy, pre-travel briefings, or emergency protocols are needed
Companies should also review their international travel insurance risk coverage in light of the incident. If employees encountered costs or complications that were not covered, or if the insurance process created delays during the response, those issues need to be addressed before the next deployment.
Updating the corporate travel safety app and tracking configurations, refreshing destination risk assessments, and communicating any policy changes to employees completes the cycle. The goal is to ensure that the next response is faster, smoother, and better resourced than the last.
How NGS helps when a natural disaster affects your travelling employees
Northcott Global Solutions provides end-to-end support for organisations managing the impact of a natural disaster on travelling staff. NGS combines real-time tracking technology, 24/7 operational monitoring, and a global network of vetted local providers to keep your people safe from the moment a situation develops.
- Live traveller tracking and risk alerts through the Aurora platform, giving risk managers visibility of employee locations and destination conditions at all times
- Mass emergency communication via SIREN, enabling immediate contact with all affected personnel simultaneously
- Emergency evacuation coordination covering ground convoys, cross-border transfers, and charter aviation for individuals, families, and large groups
- 24/7 UK Operations Centre staffed by experienced risk professionals who manage active cases and keep clients informed throughout
- Pre-travel risk briefings aligned with ISO 31030, ensuring employees are prepared before they travel to higher-risk destinations
- Local ground teams across 190+ countries, providing the on-the-ground capability that makes evacuations and welfare checks possible even when infrastructure fails
If your organisation needs a reliable partner for travel risk management and emergency response, speak to the NGS team to discuss how we can support your duty of care programme.
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