Global Terrorism – Looking Beyond Duty of Care

In light of recent incidents, a prominent security challenge faced by organisations is ensuring that the duty-of-care requirements have the reach and impact to deal with the growth of global terrorism. High-profile incidents in the United States, Sydney, Paris and Copenhagen, expose vulnerabilities and highlight the risks companies face that were previously  assumed to be confined to very different, less secure environments.

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Duty of Care Employers have a legal duty of care to their employees, which means that they should take all reasonably practicable steps to ensure employee health, safety and wellbeing. A terrorist incident could impact an organisation in a number of ways, from injuries to employees to physical damage to property as well as disruption to business processes and supply chain. Accordingly, organisations should ensure they are prepared for the risks associated with a terrorist incident. Actions to be taken can be separated into three security categories:

Monitor Understanding the organization’s exposure and identifying the people and assets at risk is key.  Monitoring of events, threat levels, trends and potential flash points is vital to understanding the risk to an organisation, while ensuring appropriate security measures are in place. Similarly, creating a culture of reporting in the organisation helps reduce the risk. Encouraging an attitude of ‘see something, say something’ helps identify unusual activity at an early stage and increases the likelihood of identifying a threat before in advance.

Prevent     Considering security in advance - ideally in the design phase - ensures controls are in place and are appropriate to the threat level; the ability to increase the level of controls commensurate to the risk is also vital. Awareness training helps employees prepare, building the mind-set to be diligent in the face of the risk, be aware of the situation and be prepared to respond.

Respond In the event that an incident does occur, staff must be prepared to respond fully and promptly, to minimise the impact and reduce unnecessary losses.  Response plans that include clearly defined roles and responsibilities are vital and it is necessary that staff members are comfortable with these in advance of any events.

Beyond Duty of Care Terror attacks can occur in any environment and ensuring that a full risk mitigation program is in place in all environments, using the monitor - prevent - respond model will help an organisation build their resilience and start to look beyond Duty of Care. Please contact your local contact person to find out how AIG can help you look beyond the duty of care for your organization.