What is duty of care?

An obligation that cannot be bought

Duty of care is the employer's legal safety obligation towards its employees, including when they are on assignment abroad. The notion fits in one sentence: a company that sends someone to work far from home answers for their safety during that trip.

The principle names no product and is not for sale. The text that carries it, its exact scope and the competent court depend on the law applicable to the employment contract; we state no court decision, no article, no amount and no statistic here. Whether the employer must therefore take out insurance is treated separately, in the file on the employer's obligation.

What makes the notion hard to handle is not its definition, which is short, but what it leaves on the company's shoulders: it bears on the safety of people, not on the delivery of a particular document. Two acts follow from it, and neither stands in for the other.

Insuring and documenting: what is the difference?

Insuring means having a contract carry the medical and financial risk. Documenting means being able to show, calmly and on request, who was where, covered by which contract, and from what date. The first act sits in an insurance policy; the second in a register. A properly insured company that cannot say where its teams were on the day of an incident has done only half the job.

The two acts complete each other without overlapping: the policy pays, the register proves. What the policy pays is detailed in the file on assignment insurance.

What does it mean to document an obligation?

Not writing an internal policy. Documenting means leaving, trip after trip, a record nobody will have to reconstruct. The difference shows the moment someone goes looking: a company that has to reopen expense claims and emails to establish who was where in March is not documenting, it is investigating — and it is doing so at the worst moment, because nobody asks the question while things are going well.

Three properties give that record its value, and they depend less on the tool than on when it is fed. It is contemporaneous: written at departure, not after the event. It is dated, and the date is the system's, not one assigned to it afterwards. It is presentable: it comes out in a form a third party will accept to read, a PDF rather than an internal spreadsheet.

Software is simply a way of getting those three properties without thinking about them: you activate a trip, the documents produce and date themselves. What the Maximum Insurance one does, screen by screen, is shown on the Duty of Care OS page — this file does not re-list it, it explains why that list exists.

What a company is asked for, and when

Rarely during the event: almost always before, or long after. Before, it is a client, a prime contractor or an insurer asking for an up-to-date document at the point of contracting. After, it is an audit or a claim, and the question is put in the past tense — was this person covered on that day, and from when?

Two documents answer those two moments. The Duty of Care compliance certificate is a dated PDF, downloadable at any time, stating that the listed employees benefit from Corporate Mobility cover during their business trips: that is the audit document. The nominative TSM certificate, issued on payment, is accepted for visa applications, Schengen included: that is the employee's document, the one they present themselves.

The rest of what an HR director wants in front of them — the map of their teams, today's official risk levels, the watch on their destinations — is not proof, it is steering. That lives in the software; the public record of the levels is open to everyone on the alerts map.

Is the tracking software billed separately?

No. Tracking software is available 24/7, at no additional cost to your company: no subscription, no per-seat cost, no commitment. You only pay for the employees you cover, on a declared headcount rather than a list of names. Price and commitment period are set out on the company pack page.

What duty of care is not

It is not a label: the software that carries the name serves to discharge the obligation, it does not replace it and does not certify it on the employer's behalf. Nor is it the cover taken alone — a policy without a register leaves a company with no answer the day it is asked where its teams were, and a register without a policy only documents precisely what was not covered. Finally, it is not universal cover: the Maximum Insurance one applies outside the country of residence and is subsidiary to compulsory schemes — it complements them, it does not replace them. Corporate Mobility General Conditions 2026 and Table of Benefits freely available on the Documents page.