Managing Risk - consider the link below
What should businesses be considering?
Discuss worse case scenario with your leadership team / key personnel - someone in your business gets COVID, it is transmitted throughout your team of 50?, two workers die and it is proven that you did not follow the guidelines issued by WorkSafe.
What will happen? It is unprecedented at the moment.
The scenario is the easy part, now risk management gets challenging:
- the leadership team begins the weigh up, what are the chances of worst case scenario actually happening? 10%, 50%?
- The weigh up starts, to determine investment in $$ and effort.
- Then how is the business going to get everyone on board? It’s well known that New Zealanders have a “she’ll be right, what’s the chances” culture so unless the business already has a strong safety culture the leadership team knows how challenging it is going to be convincing all staff to be on board & diligent.
Considering the world outside the business:
- NZ has had many situations in recent times to show that worst case scenario can & has happened, the pain for families is very real.
- WorkSafe has shown that the cost of non investment to businesses is high (fines).
- From this we have learnt that whilst the chance of the scenario occurring maybe be determined as low as <5%, the cost of getting that prediction wrong could be devastating.
Once the risk is assessed by the leadership team, the plan forward is clearer & in my experience it is normally not much different from what is recommended. The main difference is buy-in, when a team has come together to discuss risk and agree on the plan forward, leaders understand the Why and take greater responsibility.
The plan is then rolled out to the staff and the easiest way to do it is with consistent messaging, most effective face to face (toolbox's) with discussion and feedback, concerns encouraged. No leaders plan is perfect when first compiled in the boardroom, how can it be with no ground input so having to reconvene to discuss staff concerns and make changes, if necessary, is a good thing and should carry a sense of satisfaction due to a well thought out plan.
Now comes the most important part of any risk management, the monitoring of the plan (it should be a living document). Like all new systems, if it is not monitored, human nature is to get complacent and slip back to the older easier ways. The plan can also slip if staff are under pressure, it is natural to go back to the old ways, the new way is just too hard to think about on top of everything else. Again messaging and consistency is vital across the entire business, you can't be diligent with the operations team, but let the finance team slip - fairness in an organisation is a funny thing.
Like all good plans, things change, situations occur that you didn't consider up front, staff react differently than expected or the rules change. When this happens the changes should be brought to the leadership team for discussion and changes made accordingly.
Off The Clock Business Services work with leadership teams to help determine their key risks, build the plans around the risks with operational staff involvement and then field test every six months. If you are interested in learning more about our risk planning programme contact Naomi today on admin@offtheclockbusiness.com