What happens when work turns into a war zone?
It's a question Dale Buckner has been racing to answer for his clients in the wake of October 7's attacks on Israel, which sparked the Israel-Hamas war and a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. As CEO of Global Guardian, an international emergency-response and medical-services provider, Buckner and his team have been working with corporate clients to evacuate
The horrific conflict, Buckner says, should serve as a stark reminder to employers to revisit (or build) emergency planning for their workforce, particularly in a global economy that's
"There are three categories within emergency response or emergency planning that insurance and duty-of-care platforms [which are intended to help employers protect their employees no matter where they are], were not built for in the current environment," he says. "[They] do not cover war zones, natural disasters and terrorism. You think you're buying a product for the worst-case emergency, but then you read the fine print [and] realize that you have no operational capability."
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Global Guardian aims to fill the gap by helping companies and individual clients create thorough emergency plans, combining preventive measures and then executing quickly to support employees should a situation arise, says Buckner. With available tracking technology and teams in over 130 countries, the company's hundreds of corporate clients can choose the types of protection they want based on Global Guardian's up-to-date intelligence, from evacuation coverage and armed security to air ambulance access.
Buckner spoke with EBN to discuss how his teams are responding to the growing conflict in the Middle East, and what employers need to keep in mind when it comes to employee safety.
Since October 7, what has work looked like for the Global Guardian team?
We have 111 corporations and families associated with evacuations so far, and we've assisted a little over 1,100 clients getting out of Israel. We've done that with ground movements to Jordan, out of the West Bank and ground movements to Jordan through Israel proper. We then chartered a series of aircraft to Cyprus, Rome, and Athens. We drove buses of people to the airport with armed agents to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to get them out by commercial air. We did have some people that stayed in place, and we provided armed agents and are still protecting them in Israel. We also had to get some people out of Iraq and we assisted people getting out of Lebanon.
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When you sit down with a prospective client, how can you help create an individualized emergency response plan for the unimaginable?
Number one, if they have a travel management company, we want the feed from the previous year so we can analyze where and how often people are traveling. Once we have that template, we're going to look at the countries with medium to high risk. Number two, are there any red flags — if you're letting people go to parts of Africa by themselves, for example, and get a taxi, you are begging for them to be exposed to all kinds of threats. It can be prevented and you can put a bubble of security around them, beyond tracking and intel briefs that don't mean anything if you're sending people into a high-risk zone with no actual protection.
Three, most importantly, what are your insurance restrictions? If you give us a duty-of-care platform, we will highlight the restrictions and where the gaps are. We will then say how we will fill these gaps for you, and then you have a baseline for a real duty-of-care platform that goes beyond superficial tracking and intel reports and medical evac, because it means nothing once the crisis starts.
Every one of these emergencies is different, things happen and you have to respond to them. So having the capability in-country on the ground with access to aviation, boats, helicopters and guys with guns in these environments matters.
There's obviously a lot of need beyond your clients. Are you able to provide that help outside of the employees you are serving?
Yes. Think about this: An employee from one of the largest tech firms in the world was in the Ukraine. We got tasked to go get that employee in the first three days of the war [last year]. When we got there, no one told us he was going to have his family — kids, wife, cousins, grandparents — all ready to go. We're going to call the client, tell them the situation, and we're going to tell them we're pulling everybody and we expect you to pay us. If you don't, we're pulling them anyway, because I won't leave anybody behind. In 11 years, I've never not had a corporation pay us for additional people.
In all these conflicts, typically it's never just the employee, especially if it's their home country. You think about Israel, Afghanistan, Ukraine — there's all kinds of connections here. That's the first element that's almost predictable. In addition, almost every evacuation we now execute out of war zones has pets. If we load our clients and their family and we still have some seats left, I'll fill them. I'll put people on that boat, on that airplane, because it's a humanitarian effort at that point.
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What is your advice for employers whose people will continue to work remotely or travel, and for whom they are responsible?
The world is changing fast. What worked 20 years ago no longer applies. You have to have answers for these things domestically, specifically with your workforce
The frequency and ferocity of events, both domestically and internationally, is ever-increasing, which means you have exposure. This concept of being global, being able to move in minutes and hours, and actually having capability now matters more than just "I transferred the risk" and "I have a resiliency plan." You have to know you have an asset that can actually deal with kidnapping, hacking, war zones, natural disaster, terrorism, and physically get your people away from that threat. If I have 20 people, and they're in Brazil, and there's massive flooding, and I don't know how I'm going to get them out, that's a problem.
You have to change how you're organized. You have to change how you communicate. You have to change how you view risk, because it's not just transfer of finance or financial risk. And it's not just having a quote-unquote resiliency plan that we talk about once a year. It's not enough.
