How multinational firms are supporting workers affected by the US-Israeli war with Iran

It’s been a busy two weeks for CHROs and chief security officers at firms with an employee presence in the Middle East.

The US and Israel’s coordinated strikes on Iran disrupted travel in major transit hubs like Dubai, leaving many passengers—including those traveling for business—without a clear path home.

Countries that were once considered safe havens for Western business, like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar, have been directly impacted by retaliatory strikes from Iran. The unrest has prompted some companies to evacuate their employees, while others have allowed staff to temporarily relocate or work remotely. Citi and HSBC are among the banks that told staff to leave the firm’s offices in Dubai and Qatar, respectively, on Mar. 11, according to the New York Times.

As the conflict in Iran continues to evolve rapidly, HR and security consultants said it’s critical that employers continue to communicate with affected employees about support and resources that are available to them, as well as any evacuation plans.

In transit. Crisis and security consultants told HR Brew that firms have had to be creative when assisting employees caught in the Middle East on business travel. As of Mar. 12, airspace was closed or heavily limited in more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE.

Oman emerged as a new common departure point for travelers unable to leave from cities like Dubai, home to the busiest airport for international travel in the world.

Global Guardian, a global security and medical services company, has evacuated more than 4,200 people from several countries across the Middle East since the war began, the firm told HR Brew via email. The firm’s Emirati teams picked up clients in Dubai and drove them to the border of Oman, where they flew out from Muscat on commercial flights, Seth Krummrich, VP of client risk management, said. When it became more crowded to fly commercial out of Muscat by day four or five of the conflict, Global Guardian arranged charter flights for clients, he added.

The firm has facilitated similar arrangements for clients traveling from Doha, Qatar, flying them out of neighboring Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Krummrich said.

Despite best efforts to get employees out of the region, companies may still have workers who are stuck, “especially if you have travelers with passports from certain countries that don’t have a lot of visa free access,” Tyler Hosford, security director with International SOS, a security risk management company, said. If an employee has a visa for Qatar but not Saudi Arabia, for example, they may not be able to fly from Riyadh. The question then becomes, “How do you support people until they’re able to come home?”

For employers, this support might look like making sure employees have access to a corporate card so they can extend their hotel room, or purchase medications for conditions like asthma or diabetes, he said.

On the ground. HR teams are also working to support employees who are permanently based in the Middle East, whether as expats or local hires.

Employers’ obligations will differ depending on the type of contract they have with workers in the region, Hosford said. Employees who are assigned by their company to work overseas are typically covered by “duty of care,” which refers to businesses’ legal and ethical duty to ensure workers’ health and safety, including while they’re abroad.

Increasingly, though, there are a large share of foreign nationals who are employed as local hires in cities like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha, Hosford noted. Companies’ legal obligations for these workers may be less stringent, but they’re still considering how to take care of their people, he said.

Some of the most common actions employers are taking to support workers in the Middle East include allowing workers to temporarily relocate or work remotely. Should these arrangements extend for a period of time, HR teams will need to keep an eye on compliance concerns, as doing so may have implications for taxes or work authorization.

When managing a global workforce, HR teams should take into account how cultural differences can affect how employees process information during situations like this, Franciscus Vermeer, a cross-cultural HR consultant based in Brussels, said.

“It’s better to make it too concrete than too abstract, because people want certainty in an uncertain time,” he said of corporate messaging.