If you own a business, chances are there will be some element of risk involved. This risk can take the form of anything from financial to industry-related challenges. However, when it comes to human resources (HR), the risk is primarily centered around the safety of your employees.
HR and labor professionals work hard to strengthen their risk management practices and ensure that workplaces are free of hazards, hazards that could lead to employee injuries and illnesses.
So how can you improve risk management practices within your organization? Here are four important ways to identify and eliminate or control risk.
1. Identify & Assess Risk
To deal with a risk, you first need to identify it, then analyze its level of seriousness. Before starting any major project or finalizing a decision related to your employees or workspace, there should be a thorough identification stage where you highlight potential hazards or safety concerns and understand what impact they may have.
Understanding standards put in place by government agencies, including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), is a great place to start. You may even want to consider gaining insight from employees, who likely know the current condition of your workplace in greater detail.
If you are not comfortable identifying risk on your own, consider working with a professional resource that offers risk management services.
2. Assign Responsibility
The diffusion of responsibility is often the cause of workplace incidents. This concept states that when everyone assumes that someone else is responsible for risk, nothing gets done.
You can address this issue by making sure that safety responsibilities are clearly delegated throughout your staff, or assigned to external professional resources. This process can start during hiring and training, and continue throughout future development.
3. Gather Data
Gathering data is key in managing risk and provides the necessary details for professionals to understand how hazards or concerns impact employees. This data can be used to map out which existing elements of risk need to more attention and why, while also preventing new risk.
Make sure you document as much information as possible, as better data leads to better decision making. Plus, you never know when an external resource like a legal professional, government employee, or insurance agency might need your data.
4. Expect the Unexpected
Identifying and classifying every single risk would be ideal, but that simply isn't realistic. In the world of risk management, you need to learn to expect the unexpected.
Your plan absolutely needs to take into account the fact that you can't possibly plan to prevent all hazards. You can address this by having general rules and regulations that can be applied to various situations as well as specific rules, while also actively assessing situations to identify future trouble.
When an accident occurs, because chances are they will, be sure to treat impacted employees with care and respect, gather all relevant information and data, and immediately set out to understand and remove the risk.
Protect Your Business With Risk Management Services
As a business, you have a responsibility to keep your employees, customers, and partners safe. However, without the right strategy and tools, you won't be able to achieve this goal.
SynchronyHR's risk management services provide the resources necessary to protect your employees, minimize loss, and improve your organization's overall efficiency and productivity. If your organization could benefit from risk management services, get in touch with us through our contact page.