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How to Assess and Manage Risk Within Your Business

BY Rebecca | 26 November, 2014 | no comments

One of the most important parts of running a business is assessing and managing the risks. If you don’t bother to do this, all kinds of things could go wrong. Depending on the industry you work in, you could have more risks to worry about than others. Regardless, you should be able to assess and manage them effectively to move forward and grow. Here’s how to do it:

Write a Business Plan

If you haven’t already, writing a business plan is essential to ensuring you can assess, evaluate, and plan for risks effectively. You should do this in all aspects of your business; finance, marketing and more.

You can follow this up by writing a risk management plan, listing all possible risks you think could affect the business. Record how you’ll go about minimising these risks too. You should update both of these plans where you need to.

Get Somebody to Help You

If you’re unsure of what constitutes as a risk, you can get somebody to help you. There are people you can hire who can work in house for you, identifying possible risks within the business. You could even do a course designed by the likes of Risk Audit to help you become a dab hand at doing this on your own.

Look for Hazards

Now you’ve identified the risks you could face regarding business decisions, look for physical hazards within your business. Is there any way you or your employees could get hurt? What about clients? Finding risks like this will help you to effectively manage them.

Prioritise Hazards

Make a list of hazards and risks and prioritise them, so you can set up measures to keep them at bay as soon as possible. Number them like this:

  • A score of 1 could mean a risk is very likely to occur.
  • A score of 2 could mean there’s a chance the risk will occur.
  • A score of 3 could mean there’s a small chance.
  • A score of 4 could mean there’s hardly any chance.

Make Sure Employees Know What to Do in an Emergency

If you have employees, each one of these should know what to do in case of an emergency. Employees should know the address of the building, the location of the exits, and how to keep themselves safe.

Identify Location Risks

There may be risks you face due to your specific location too. Think of the natural disasters you could be subject to and make sure you all know what you will do in case of a disaster such as this.

Identify Human Risks

Although you should trust your staff, you do face a certain amount of human risk. Some employees may abuse drugs, for example, in which case they will need to be rehabilitated before they injure themselves or somebody else in the work place. There’s also the worry of theft and fraud.

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If you can effectively manage your risks and hazards in this way, you’ll thoroughly safeguard your business from anything and everything that could go wrong. Good luck!

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