Ensuring Essential Duty of Care for Your Group Travel Housing Needs

Duty of Care describes the obligations that an employer has for their employees both at the worksite and in the accommodations where employees stay when traveling for company business. Services like a welcoming team, tailored amenities, and responsive support come to mind as first-level descriptions of duty of care, but the Dwellworks Living team knows the obligations go much deeper. Ensuring safe, secure, and well-matched housing, managing the safety and well-being of a team while onsite at a property, using expert technology to make the whole accommodations process run efficiently, and providing resources to any group of employees traveling for business, internships, or relocation are ways Dwellworks Living approaches duty of care holistically. 

In our latest white paper, Accommodations Solutions for Groups, we list several use cases for different types of groups whose accommodation needs we’ve handled in our nearly 20 years in the temporary living industry. This blog shares the ways duty of care is core to every one of those experiences. 

Intern Housing: The Need to Build Community 

Dwellworks Living moves hundreds of interns every year, and many of these employers also use us for ongoing relocation needs for temporary living and destination services. This year we were selected again as the housing partner to source and manage housing for one of the world's largest combined brick-and-mortar and online retailers. The remit included finding furnished housing for 150 interns in 3 core markets, and hotel accommodations in another 30+ locations.  

For interns, we know that the experience ranks high for their future choices of employer – and that mattered for our client. Duty of care begins with sourcing units in close proximity to each other and the employer’s campus so the interns can build community throughout their time on the project. Dwellworks Living sources properties through our industry-leading epic^® sourcing software, connected via customizable APIs to our clients’ authorization systems and our supplier database for a secure and streamlined exchange of information. We confirm the best matches for availability, number of units, price, amenities, distance to the company’s office, and any other requirements, such as capabilities for onsite meetings at the property or green-friendly options. Employers and their trusted agents then review our recommended choices via our Top Options interface. Upon approval, we book and secure accommodations at a competitive, guaranteed rate. Then we begin the process of communication with interns and initiate our detailed pre-arrival inspections and protocols.  

Once the housing was secured for these interns, we took our duty of care commitment a step further with a detailed web page for every property, presenting the property features as well as check-in procedures, a detailed local community overview, and curated recommendations from our on-the-ground team. These digital assets were reinforced at a welcome reception at each property along with a dedicated 24-7 service response team to address any intern’s concern. 

Group Trainings and Onboarding: The Need to Be in the Know 

Duty of Care requirements for group trainings and onboarding trips are similar to those for intern moves, in that these are often new employees or employees traveling to learn a new skill. Our experience with group training accommodations management was recognized by a global bank in Hong Kong for multi-year group support needs. Our most recent temporary living project for their Early Careers Program in APAC required the new employees in training to be based in Hong Kong and Singapore but to travel across the region on a regular basis. Our job was to provide a secure ‘home base’ and coordinate arrival and departure dates in furnished living. This ensured the employees had an optimal experience while we managed the employer’s cost to maximum efficiency and enable the ability to track the location of this valuable segment of their workforce. 

As stated above, Duty of Care also means equipping employees with support and access to resources. For new employees who travel often but may be unfamiliar with company travel practices or destination locations, recommendations for the new places they visit can put them at ease amidst their busy schedules and new job responsibilities. Every Dwellworks Living guest is provided with our free Xplore mobile app - a guide to living like a local in their destination city, covering current recommendations for everything from late night eateries to early morning running paths in over 100 global destinations.   

Rotational Assignments: The Need for Flexibility 

Duty of Care also means enabling flexibility and situational responsiveness for our clients and their employees. This is especially expected for our clients who require rotational assignments. The client’s request in this instance could mean managing dual tracks of short and long-term housing for a single employee – with the expectation that housing requirements could change on short notice if the nature of the work assignment changes. In these instances, employees require immediate notification of their options, while clients need updates on where the employee is being housed, as well as any additional communications required to facilitate the move with the least possible disruption.  

Dwellworks Living’s expert teams in destination services and temporary living often work together to provide options for our clients drawing on our deep presence in local markets. In a recent use case, a client needed flexible housing choices for an ongoing, rotating population they were sending on assignments of various lengths to Amsterdam. Depending on the business purpose for the travel, we placed their employees with short-term stays in furnished serviced apartments, and employees with stays of a year or more in unfurnished apartments. We also negotiated rates and availability with local hotels to bridge any moves between accommodations. 

Our longstanding relationships with our network of 3,500 supplier partners worldwide allow us this flexibility, supplemented by our familiarity with local landlords based on our volume and years of market presence. Even in markets with less than 1% rental vacancy, like Amsterdam, our local reputation and knowledge enabled us to find appropriate options across all accommodations categories at a high level of customer satisfaction. 

Group Project Work: The Need for Assured Safety and Security 

Companies assigning their employees to group project work may be sending them to high-stress, high-security areas and, regardless of the location, are typically sending them on high-profile assignments with critical value to the business. The nature of the assignment could include extended customer audits, installing new technologies, or launching new operations in manufacturing, high tech, or energy markets. When sending employees to challenging locations, Duty of Care becomes ‘job one’ as employers expect not only commitment, but proven compliance with HSSES protocols for Health, Safety, Security, Environment, and Social Responsibility. 

One of the world’s largest diversified energy services organizations relies on Dwellworks Living to source alternative accommodations on a global scale. In assessing Dwellworks Living’s readiness as a fully compliant partner, they reviewed internal investments we’ve made such as our Enterprise Risk Management Committee, co-chaired by our CEO, CFO, and Chief Technology Officer, to manage risk assessment and mitigation across our business. This internal committee proactively addresses identified opportunities for improvement across service delivery, supply chain management, and financial operations as well as data privacy and security. 

They also know we are committed to leadership in our ESG practices. We take a stakeholder approach to meet the expectations of clients, customers, investors, communities, and regulators, while managing our business per a reasonable sustainability timeline and resource commitments. Each year, we update our ESG practices in our ESG Impact Report. Read the latest report on our ESG page of our website. 

High Impact Global Events: The Need for Compassion 

External world events like war and global pandemics require immediate responses to keep our clients safe and functioning. In the spring of 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Dwellworks Living was contacted by multiple clients to secure the immediate removal of their employees from the region. While the millions of refugees from Ukraine created a global humanitarian crisis, employees of Western companies in Russia also found themselves isolated as employers and employees were directly impacted by severe financial sanctions. In one example for one of the world’s largest technology employers, Dwellworks Living was asked to quickly move 244 employees from locations in Russia to company operations in Dublin and Munich. 

Dwellworks Living exercised duty of care by organizing an all-hands response team in our European offices, who found properties in locations with extremely limited inventory and went the distance to secure unique solutions from landlords and property managers with whom we have longstanding relationships. Most importantly, our expert team is a team who cares. Not only do we provide resources via our technology and property matching capability, but each client services director is a resource who is ready to answer the call when crisis strikes. We secure flexible housing because our directors stay on the phone with our partners during regular and off hours to see the bookings through. Clients can trust that our partnerships, technology, and industry knowledge are all backed by a dedicated team, who meets duty of care standards even in the most high-pressure circumstances.  

We’re Experts in Housing Solutions for Interns and Other Corporate Travel Groups  

Whether you have furnished living needs for interns, a project team, or employees on rotational assignments, Dwellworks Living provides serviced accommodations solutions for short, medium, and long-term stays. With a global portfolio of 80,000 properties and partners in over 125 countries, a tri-regional service team of customer experience professionals, and a wide range of services for global mobility and travel clients, we help businesses attract and retain top talent, support employee productivity, and ensure a smooth and successful experience anywhere in the world. Dwellworks Living is the preferred housing solutions partner of multiple Fortune 1000 employers and leading relocation management companies. For more information on our services for Group housing needs, contact us at the button below and download our white paper above.