🕒 2 min read
By Emily Byrne, Marketing Manager at Track24/AtlasNXT
Effective risk management is often about thinking ahead and anticipating what future risks might be, proactively rather than reactively, to lessen the impact of risk when it does occur. When it comes to risk, organisations are increasingly expecting the unexpected and implementing software solutions to help them manage critical events at a moment’s notice. Effective analysis of previous critical events will strengthen an organisation’s ability to comprehend and manage further risk.
“Effective risk management means attempting to control, as much as possible, future outcomes by acting proactively rather than reactively. Therefore, effective risk management offers the potential to reduce both the possibility of a risk occurring and its potential impact.” Source.
Risk is always present, it is an organisation’s approach to risk and how risk is dealt with that matters. Below are five steps to success for effective risk management.
Consider communications
Harvard Business Review outlines the complexities of communicating risk in the modern era:
“Communicating about uncertainty — what people call ‘risk communications’ in practice — has become one of the most important challenges faced by anyone who needs to convey or consume information.” Source.
An effective communications software means you can easily flag and discuss potential risks within your organisation. Many software solutions enable you to create and enroll employees into location-based groups, which might help to streamline the communications process and channel messages to different locations, when the risk profile varies amongst your organisation’s operations.
When it comes to effective risk management, communication is key. As stated by presidential speech writer and author, James Humes: “The art of communication is the language of leadership”. It is common for communication surrounding risk to be delivered as a top-down initiative.
Harness data feeds to capture risk profiles
Data feeds are an innovative solution to predicting and anticipating risk. Data feeds can inform your employees of risks they might face when traveling in high-risk areas, instances of extreme weather, percentages and instances of conflict and violent crime in defined zones or locations… The list goes on as the possibilities enabled by data intelligence become increasingly sophisticated.
According to Aon: “Many companies are incorporating data and analytics into their business functions and realizing the returns—but few are putting data to work in risk management. But the potential benefits, including a more dynamic and strategic approach to risk, are too big to ignore. Companies that take these steps now can help set themselves up for both short-term and long-term value.” Source.
Data feeds are one of the most important factors to maintaining a proactive, rather than reactive approach to risk. Having news and statistics on your organisation’s side goes a long way when it comes to anticipating how risk might need to be managed next.
Utilise Critical Event Management platforms
When a risk amounts to a full-blown critical event, a critical event management platform will enable your organisation to immediately understand the location and safety status of your people during a critical event, so you can keep control when the unexpected happens. Two-way communication can help you advise your people on the best cause of action to take, when they need protection the most.
Inform strategy with Incident Dashboards and analysis
Incident Dashboards allow your organisation to analyse historic risks and critical events, in order to inform your wider strategy as to how you might anticipate and manage risk in the future. Detailed analysis post critical event, ensures a positive outcome emerges from a potentially unsettling situation. It is increasingly common for organisations to interpret both data and response from previous events to enable them to take a more proactive approach to addressing similar risk-based scenarios going forward.
Amazon Web Services provide a useful breakdown of five steps which can be implemented for effective ‘post-incident analysis’:
- Improve incident response.
- Understand the root cause of the problem,
- Address root causes with deliverable action items.
- Analyse the impact of incidents.
- Capture and share learnings within an organisation. Source.
Respond to the changing nature of how organisations understand risk
Post-pandemic, as a hybrid model of working matures, organisations increasingly take a more nuanced, holistic approach to understanding and managing risk. Risk is increasingly considered to be as much about high risk events as it is poor connectivity at home, understanding mental health and wellbeing needs of employees and additional cyber security threats as many work from home on remote servers. In short, risk could be anything which will impact the operations of an organisation.
Take Aways
Here at Track24, we’ve provided you with a useful guide of five steps to success when it comes to effective risk management in the modern era. To find out how AtlasNXT, our single-solution safeguarding and communications platform, can help your organisation achieve effective risk management, click here: https://atlasnxt.com