In Africa, the reputation and financial credibility of your organization is at risk.

HR departments must identify and prepare for such risks and this post explains how.

The key threat to a NGO is an ethical one: how do you prevent your staff from suffering harm by the loss of life, liberty or limb? Your staff are often working in areas affected by the lack of infrastructure, terrorist activity or natural disaster, yet they remain your responsibility.

This risk of harm is often caused by inadequate Duty of Care (DoC) protocols and unplanned security incidents. To prevent such harm to your staff and designated personnel, you need a documented strategy to ensure their safety and security wherever they are located.

Zero Foundation Africa provides expert advice and training to NGOs to ensure that they can deliver their services in a safe and secure environment.

We achieve this by the following services:

• 1. Develop documented policies, standard operating procedures and operational practices to ensure your compliance with your Duty of Care obligations.
• 2. Liaise with insurance companies to maintain a high level of responsiveness in the event of a catastrophic incident.
• 3. Recruit, select and train suitably qualified local staff to provide travel security services for your staff. Apart from conducting an airport meet and greet, secure transportation, baggage handling and customs clearance of critical goods, your local team must also provide other services.
• 4. Your local security team needs to have emergency first aid training, acquire defensive driving knowledge, know rapid evacuation tactics and manage convoy security.
• 5. Ex-pat staff and designated personnel must undergo a H.E.AT. course to understand how to handle disasters both natural and man-made. Learning such self-reliance survival skills will reduce the HR managers’ dependence on third parties who might not be able respond quickly enough.
• 6. Schedule a briefing session by our Zero Foundation Africa travel security experts before visiting in-country.

Using current and on-the-ground intelligence, your executives will receive the newest destination intelligence, predict future courses of action, identify the nature of actual threats and develop tried and tested countermeasures.

As a leading provider of H.E.A.T. courses and anti-kidnap training for NGOs in Africa, read our datasheet for HR Managers for NGOs in Africa here and learn how protect your assets from financial and reputational damage.