Evacuation: How to Rescue a Business From a War Zone

The Bottom Line

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Business

4.6 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When a company finds itself facing war or natural disaster how can it get staff out of harm's way, and is there any chance of ensuring business as usual?

Evan Davis speaks to one business leader who helped move hundreds of staff out of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia when war broke out in 2022. Two crisis response companies explain how they have been helping clients with people and operations in Lebanon, Israel and parts of the USA recently hit by hurricanes.

Plus, what is an employer's obligation in these situations, and do the same rules apply to international as well as local hires?

Evan is joined by:

Ann Roberts, chief people officer, Flo; James Waddington, global director of security assistance, International SOS; Elmarie Marais, founder and CEO, GoCrisis; and Anna, an employee at Wildix.

Production team:

Producer: Simon Tulett Researchers: Drew Hyndman and Michaela Graichen Editor: Matt Willis Sound: Pete Wise and Tim Heffer Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison

(Picture: A Ukrainian flag flies from a destroyed building in Mariupol, April 2022. Credit: Reuters/Alexander Ermochenko/BBC)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:05.3	Hello, welcome.
0:06.9	You hear a lot about various kinds of disasters
0:09.3	hitting different parts of the world.
0:11.3	Wars, obviously.
0:12.7	Hurricanes and floods in the news right now over in the US.
0:16.3	But anything from coups to earthquakes.
0:18.7	And given the sheer number of tragic challenges that are making
0:22.5	headlines right now, we thought we should examine one particular theme, how businesses
0:27.5	handle them, and in particular the hazards facing their own staff. Can they keep the show on the
0:33.7	road? Or do they just get everybody they can out of harm's way? And what are the rules,
0:38.6	what obligations do companies have to their employees and indeed to their customers? Well, we have
0:44.2	three guests to help us interrogate this topic today. You'll hear from two of them a bit later.
0:50.6	First, let's find out how one company managed when a war broke out.
0:56.9	Anne Roberts is Chief People Officer at that company. The company is Flow. It is a women's health
1:02.6	app. February 2022, Anne, we all know what war erupted then. When you realize it was war, what were you thinking?
1:12.6	What were the challenges you faced?
1:14.6	So I remember waking up normal Thursday morning, putting up my laptop, seeing the news that the war had broken out.
1:21.8	We had an executive call about 30 minutes later.
1:26.3	So we had people, vast majority in Belarus, because we were created in Minsk. So we had people vast majority in Belarus because we were
1:29.4	created in Minsk. So we were fairly seasoned in political instability and crisis. We had people in
1:36.0	Ukraine and we had people in Moscow. Number one priority, I think, for any company, would be,
	...

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