The Acronym VUCA … and TRM

Travel Risk Technology in a world of chaos

VUCA is an acronym doing the rounds more and more as we see further geopolitical change, conflict and uncertainty. Taking time to view your technology in context to volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity is time and effort well spent. It is not a new acronym, I believe it was first coined decades ago, but the sentiment is very relevant today and worth using it as a framework to analyse Travel Risk Management solutions. It is a big test for your travel risk technology, to predict, implement and adapt activity and policy in an uncertain world … but as they say, hope is not a strategy.

Volatility

Change is inevitable, managing your safety and security policies effectively within this chaos is critical, especially when it comes to your travel programs. Organizations must adapt to shifting requirements and regulations while identifying events that impact their operations, people, travel, supply chain, technology and infrastructure. Investing time and effort to identify trends and anomalies, should help inform your response activities and travel policies. Finding reliable and verifiable sources of intelligence is essential to decision making and maintaining control amidst chaos. Your travel risk solution should actively aid in identifying events, triaging them alongside other situations, managing response cases and be able to adapt all of those to change.

Some points of action

• Read and learn from intelligence forecasts and use tools that help predict and alert to behaviours

• Look to plan and build response around threats by category and scale with ability to adapt on the fly

• Revisit your risk register often and ensure you are evolving it and mitigating anything new

Uncertainty

Navigating unpredictable events and frequent changes can be challenging for any organization. It's crucial to encourage employee confidence by clearly communicating travel requirements as early as possible and how they impact the individual and the company. By shifting from uncertainty to clarity, we can explore new possibilities and find the best information to guide our decisions, even if you need to adapt during chaos.

Some points of action

• Run exercises and tests for known threats and reuse those skills and frameworks if unpredictable events occur

• Take a proactive approach, educate and train, don’t wait for situations to happen

• Be ready to adapt, use technologies that provide features that can be tweaked as you go

Complexity

Highly interconnected events and ongoing situations over extended periods can have widespread effects on your people, operations, suppliers, and economies. We often hear about poly-crises. These occur when multiple, severe situations happen simultaneously, potentially interlinked, creating a complex and challenging environment for businesses to navigate. Major incidents may require a level of organisation, coordination, communication and activities both immediately and over a long period of time. It is crucial that you use technologies to aid in each of these to handle case manage from start to end.

Some points of action

• Build your risk register with the flexibility to handle interconnected situations at scale

• Use risk and enterprise tools that best suit rapid coordination and collaboration during incidents

• If you adapt existing processes and solutions, make sure those learnings are fed back and built back into your response

Ambiguity

Addressing misinformation and disinformation is crucial for making informed and transparent decisions. Using the right intelligence and risk solutions should enable you to analyse and validate data sources in a suitable time frame. Any decision making based off this information may need to be taken within regulatory and compliancy limitations. Keeping employees well-informed and calm during incidents is vital for maintaining a productive and positive situation.

Some points of action

• Use intelligence sources that provide citations and tools to validate and clarify reality on the ground

• Ensure you only provide clear and concise information to your employees impacted by incidents

• Implement services where you can provide points of communication from employees for clarifying situations and providing assistance

  
  

In summary

While you can't control the world, you can use the data, expertise and technology available to increase clarity and certainty. Look to travel risk solutions that provide more depth to the information you are being fed, provides ways to adapt your activities and policy, and gives you a level of control to make sure everyone is informed and focused. Technology can be a powerful tool to help bring some level of order to chaos, ensuring your organisation is on top of the situation and your employees whether at home, the office or on travel stay informed, calm, and safe.