Every time an employee boards a flight for your business, you carry a legal obligation that extends far beyond the booking confirmation.
Every time an employee boards a flight for a client meeting, a site inspection, or a regional conference, your business accepts a legal and moral obligation that most South African companies are not fully prepared for. Duty of care in corporate travel is one of the most under-managed risks in the corporate landscape — and one that carries severe financial and reputational consequences when it fails.
Duty of care is your obligation as an employer to take reasonable steps to protect the health, safety, and wellbeing of employees while they travel for work. In South Africa, this obligation is grounded in the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA, 85 of 1993), common law principles of negligence, and the expectations set by institutional risk and ESG frameworks.
In practice, duty of care means more than booking a reputable airline. It means having documented procedures for what happens when things go wrong — and the operational infrastructure to act on those procedures quickly.
Real-time traveller tracking is a core component of a functioning duty of care programme.
While the OHSA was written primarily with workplace safety in mind, courts and legal practitioners have applied its principles to the mobile workforce. At a minimum, a South African employer with travelling employees should be able to demonstrate:
Centralised booking means you always know where every traveller is — before, during, and after their trip.
Identifying destination-specific risks — political instability, health advisories, weather events — before the traveller departs.
Airlines, hotels, and car hire providers that meet defined safety, service, and compliance standards.
A live person, available at any hour, who can rebook, reroute, and resolve emergencies before they become crises.
Consider a scenario familiar to many South African risk managers: a sales executive flies to Nairobi for client meetings. On the second day, civil unrest breaks out near the city centre. The employee's hotel is in the affected area. The company has no centralised booking record, no TMC relationship, and no 24/7 emergency contact number.
Hours pass before anyone in the Johannesburg head office becomes aware. By the time they reach the employee, the person has been isolated in their hotel room for most of the day — with no rebooking assistance, no guidance, and no support.
Beyond the human impact, the legal and reputational consequences can be significant. Potential liability under OHSA, regulatory scrutiny, and lasting damage to employee trust are all realistic outcomes of a duty of care failure.
The most common duty of care failure is not a lack of intention — it is a lack of infrastructure.
Most companies mean well. They simply do not have the systems in place to act when a situation arises. A TMC is that infrastructure.
When all travel is booked through RTM Travel, every itinerary is visible to your designated travel manager in real time. Our team monitors global disruptions — airline strikes, weather events, political instability — and proactively contacts affected travellers before you even have to ask.
Every booking comes with access to our 24/7 emergency line. Your employees are never on their own. If a situation arises, they have one number to call and a team that already knows their itinerary, their preferences, and their corporate account details.
We maintain preferred relationships with vetted hotel and transport partners across the domestic and African routes our clients travel most. Every accommodation recommendation on our platform meets a minimum standard of safety and service that your company can stand behind.
Duty of care in corporate travel is not a checkbox exercise. It is an ongoing operational commitment — one that requires the right partner, the right processes, and the right technology. If your company is still booking travel ad hoc or through consumer platforms, now is the time to address that gap. Read our complete guide to corporate travel management to understand the full picture, or learn how to write a corporate travel policy that formalises your duty of care obligations.
Yes. Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act (85 of 1993) and common law principles of negligence, South African employers are obligated to take reasonable steps to protect employees who travel for work. This obligation extends to both domestic and international business travel.
Your company should have a documented emergency response protocol that includes 24/7 contact with your TMC, access to emergency funds, and a clear chain of communication. With a TMC, your travel desk will proactively reach out to affected travellers during a disruption — often before the traveller has realised there is a problem.
The biggest risk is not knowing where your travelling employees are. Without centralised booking through a TMC, there is no real-time visibility of active travellers. If a disruption occurs — a weather event, strike, or security incident — there is no reliable way to locate or assist affected staff.
A TMC centralises all bookings, giving your travel manager real-time visibility of every active traveller. RTM Travel monitors global disruptions and proactively contacts affected travellers. Our 24/7 team is available to reroute, rebook, and provide emergency assistance at any hour.
Yes. Duty of care obligations apply to all work-related travel. For South African companies, this includes routine Johannesburg–Cape Town routes, regional SADC travel, and international trips. The risk level varies by destination, but the employer obligation does not.
RTM Travel's 24/7 support and real-time traveller visibility protect your people and your business on every trip.
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