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The Top 12 Duty of Care Responsibilities for Meeting Professionals

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An organization’s duty of care is to do all that is reasonably prudent to prepare for foreseeable disasters, regardless of the likelihood. The duty of care begins with a heightened dedication to the safety of not just employees, but all attendees, including sponsors, vendors, exhibitors, spectators, journalists, speakers and invitees.
The Top 12 Duty of Care Responsibilities for Meeting Professionals

The organization’s duty of care is a legal duty with consequences. Meeting stakeholders and planners can be held personally liable for failure to meet their professional responsibility in areas such as:

  • Conducting proper due diligence when sourcing a location and venue
  • Informing attendees of potential threats
  • Providing attendees with critical emergency procedures such as evacuation routes, exits strategies, medical, security and law enforcement contacts
Here are your top 12 duty of care responsibilities:
1. Involve key meeting stakeholders in the meeting risk management design process.
2. Assess the vulnerability of the event based on location, past crises, controversial subjects or people.
3. Investigate foreseeable disruptions, representations, warnings, circumstances, recent criminal/violent activity and off-site risks and advise the meeting sponsor of areas of foreseeable risk and potential impact.
4. Know your company’s policies, procedures and legal requirements for risk management.
5. Recommend written contingency plans that incorporate company risk policies.
6. Include the chain of command and crisis communication strategy in the contingency plan.
7. Know the safety protocol for your venues, local law enforcement, medical, destination management company (DMC) and other resources for your event and incorporate them into the crisis management plan.
8. Conduct a cyber fraud vulnerability assessment and engage a specialist to recommend a protection plan.
9. Rehearse crisis scenarios for fire, medical, demonstrations, active shooter, weather, data breach and other foreseeable disruptions.
10. Inform attendees of emergency procedures, potential threats or dangers and evacuation routes.
11. Collect attendee emergency contact information through registration, ADA special attendee needs and daily location of attendees.
12. Perform a meeting risk management debrief after the event.
Ask the expert

Brenda Rivers

JD, HMCC, CIS   

Meeting Professional – Lawyer – Consultant – Trainer - Author

Brenda Rivers, President and founder of SAFE LLC, is a risk management expert who frequently speaks at major meetings industry events.

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Mitigating Meeting Disasters: Creating Safe Meetings in an Unsafe World

The safety of attendees and security of events has always been a key concern for all event and meeting professionals, who recognize that people are an organization’s greatest assets. And while there certainly can be many threats whenever large groups of people gather, the meeting and event industry remains strong, given the importance companies place on face-to-face meetings to foster business development, social ties and cultural cohesion.

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