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Developing an aware office culture

One risk of risk awareness is that managers might believe that is the responsibility one person or department to manage risk – to be aware of it and deal with it in the workplace. In fact, awareness of potential problems must exist throughout the organization, from top to bottom.

During the 2014 Nonprofit Risk Summit, Diana Del Bel Belluz of Risk Wise Inc. emphasized the importance of leadership’s establishing risk awareness throughout the organization, getting all employees to see the importance of risk awareness and prevention strategies. She said that this awareness is just one part of an overall strategy of goals and aspirations for risk management.

Del Bel Belluz listed the common risk management goals and aspirations:

  • Creating a risk-aware culture;
  • Engaging diverse people and points of view in risk identification and understanding;
  • Providing assurance to the board of directors;
  • Reducing avoidable losses;
  • Motivating consistent behavior around risk taking and risk management (i.e., more aligned with risk-management criteria);
  • Inspiring confidence on the part of stakeholders that objectives will be met;
  • Creating or improving backup plans in the event things turn out differently than expected;
  • Creating a “radar”/early warning system for risk events; and,
  • Selecting the “best” risks/opportunities to pursue.