Company Announcement - International sos, the world’s leading medical and security services company, is hosting its first south african 'duty of care' event in johannesburg. Dr. Philip nganwa, regional medical director – assistance (southern africa) at international sos said:
 
“Duty of care is a company’s obligation to safeguard employees from risk. The world has become an increasingly unpredictable working environment for global employees. Fortunately, we've collected an impressive amount of risk mitigation knowledge over our 30-year history and our johannesburg seminar is aimed at sharing that knowledge with our valued clients."
 
Natural disasters, civil strife, disease outbreaks and even the fallout from financial meltdowns all combine to present challenging 'duty of care' environments for today's global employer. International sos' first south african seminar to address the moral and legal obligations of employers to their employees, contractors and volunteers will take place at melrose arch's fire & ice hotel on the 24th of november 2015.
 
Clients across industries with global reach such as energy, mining, banking, oil and gas will listen to a presentation by anastasia vatalidis, a director and head of employment law at leading south africa law firm, werksmans. Ms vatalidis' presentation will focus on the rights and obligations of south african companies and organisations regarding the responsibility to protect their travelling and expatriate staff, as well as understanding how duty of care improves business performance and productivity, amongst other talking points.
 
Duty of care refers to the moral and legal obligations of employers to their employees, contractors, volunteers and related family members in maintaining their well-being, security and safety when working, posted on international assignments or working in remote areas of their home country. Individuals and organisations have legal obligations to act prudently to avoid the risk of reasonable foreseeable injury or exposures leading to ill health.
 
Dr. Nganwa concluded:
 
"International sos is committed to continually adding to the body of risk mitigation knowledge available to our multinational clients by regularly hosting duty of care conferences, webinars and producing white papers.
Fulfilling duty of care obligations can seem like a daunting task when employers are held accountable for a number of situations that could potentially place employees, their dependents and others at risk.
 
In addition to delivering on duty of care, implementing pre-travel health checks and malaria prevention measures for business travellers and international assignees provide financial benefits to the organisation.this has been highlighted in a prevention study, published by prevent and commissioned by the international sos foundation.
The return on prevention study is the latest instalment of the duty of care trilogy and shows how the benefits of implementing a travel health prevention strategy significantly outweigh the operating costs of the programme.
 
Prevent’s return on prevention study can be downloaded at www.internationalsos.com
 
To register for the event kindly email – farai.mutiwanyuka@internationalsos.com