Travel with pride: six steps to support your LGBTQ travellers
Sexual orientation goes beyond travel policies and programmes. It is an organisation’s Duty of Care to adequately prepare its workforce for foreseeable medical and travel security risks including the specific risks faced by its mobile LGBTQ people.
With this in mind, how can you make sure your LGBTQ staff will be suitably supported when away and that your diversity policy will be upheld? Is it safe to be open about sexual orientation in a particular destination? Is this a subject you are empowered to deal with? The risks faced by your LGBTQ workforce may vary based on the destinations to which they travel, influenced by factors including the legal status of LGBTQ relationships and the levels of social tolerance.
Like any personal characteristic, sexual orientation and gender identity are part of our personal risk profiles. To protect your people, you need to understand the specific risks involved and put in place processes to mitigate them.
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Creating a travel programme that achieves your organisation's diversity & inclusion goals
In our blog, we discuss the six-steps you can take to support your LGBTQ travellers. However, we appreciate embarking on this journey can be daunting, especially if you have no prior experience.
We are able to help you in this journey. Our approach is consultative and is specifically designed to help you achieve your organisation's specific diversity and inclusion goals.
Security experts will conduct inclusion & diversity and security stakeholder reviews for you. These interviews will be taken into consideration with a full review of your existing challenges, policies, processes and systems.
The end result is a practical recommendation of what steps can be made, for example:
- Your location-specific risks and challenges
- Mobility / travel policy changes
- Support mechanisms
- Education programmes
- Response planning
Educating your people now
Our market-leading travel risk training prepares your people before they leave on an assignment. This can be generic or destination-specific, but the aim is always to improve understanding of the most significant risks LGBTQ people may face.
Remember that training is not just for LGBTQ staff, it is equally important to train other travellers on the considerations they need to make. And to ensure managers and mobility staff globally are well-informed so they can suitably support their colleagues.
Our training solutions can be delivered either in a traditional classroom or a virtual classroom format. To reach a larger on-demand audience, we provide a digital learning offering that is accessible via the International SOS Training Hub or can be co-hosted on your company’s learning platform.
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