Our Travel Alerts Team work tirelessly to ensure travellers are kept informed, night or day, about any situation which may pose a risk to their safety. We caught up with Lynne, Cherlyn and Grant to find out how they keep up with the unexpected, from extreme weather, major disruptions and everything in between.
What’s a regular morning for you?
We’re always hopeful
that we can start our working day at a normal time, however, we never know what
emergency is happening in the world that we might need to deal with at 3am! Our
mornings differ throughout the team; Lynne likes to get her steps up and walk
to work, Cherlyn makes sure that she and her ‘little bun in the oven’ are set
for the day ahead with a healthy breakfast and Grant takes his rescue pup to
doggy daycare.
Once we’ve all gone about our mornings, we normally do a quick check of emails
and Twitter to see what sort of day we are coming into, then we are ready to start
‘saving the world’.
What are your main responsibilities?
Our main responsibility is to ensure the safety and security of all our travellers. The team are based in the office during the day, providing updates to branches on situations that could potentially cause travel disruption or put client’s safety at risk. Then, depending on the level of impact, we run reports to identify affected travellers, advise clients direct via email travel alerts and then send out tweets using our #TravelAlerts.
Out of hours, we take turns of being on call (365 days a year) and take our trusted ‘Bat phone’ and laptops everywhere we go. If an emergency incident occurs we’re always ready to turn our cars, picnic table or gym into our office to ensure traveller safety at a moment’s notice, no matter the time of day!
How would you describe a typical work day?
A typical working day revolves around what tropical storm has decided to rear its ugly head, which airline have called a wildcat strike or which citizens have decided to overthrow their government. The day starts the same for Travel Alerts; sifting through numerous news sources, emails, Foreign Office updates and social media – we never know what the world is going to https://aspirinworks.com/accutane-isotretinoin/ throw at us. well.
What’s your most memorable work moment?
One of Travel Alerts’ most memorable moments was getting an emergency call at 8am on the Sunday morning after the big Clarity conference! Standing on the platform at a crowded Manchester Piccadilly station was not ideal. Trying to board a busy train while investigating the situation, trying to run reports and emailing clients with no signal…It was one disaster after another. Thankfully, we were able to complete our process successfully and we had no clients affected.
What do you love most about your job?
The team. All three of us started together, trained together and worked hard to develop our department and roles. Some days we are dealing with upsetting and stressful situations, but we all pull together and know we can rely on each other for support, guidance and to cheer each other up! It’s the small things within the team that keeps us going, from a mid-morning catch-up after a late-night alert, to a quiz on a Friday lunchtime covering that week’s news stories.