What is risk management explain the risk control measure for an organization?

Employers, self-employed persons and principals are responsible for identifying safety hazards at workplaces and taking steps to eliminate or reduce the risks. This includes assessing, controlling, monitoring, and communicating risks.

What is risk management?

Risk management is the process of identifying, evaluating and controlling risks at the workplace.

It is a cornerstone of the workplace safety and health framework to foster an accident-prevention culture, and its requirements are stipulated in accordance with the Workplace Safety and Health (Risk Management) Regulations.

Risk management involves:

• Conducting risk assessments of work activities.
• Controlling and monitoring the risks of work activities.
• Communicating the risks to all stakeholders.

Your workplace must conduct regular risk assessments to identify the source of risks. After that, it should take reasonable steps to eliminate or minimise the risk.

Regulations

The Workplace Safety and Health (Risk Management) Regulations state that employers, self-employed persons and principals (including contractors and sub-contractors) are responsible for identifying safety and health hazards at workplaces and taking measures to eliminate or reduce the risks.

For more information on the regulations, see the following:

• Press release on risk management by the Workplace Safety and Health Advisory Committee (WSHAC, now known as the WSH Council)
• Guide to Workplace Safety and Heath (Risk Management) Regulations

Conducting risk assessments

Risk assessments are a key part of risk management. Your workplace should conduct risk assessments for all routine and non-routine operations:

• Routine operations include preparatory and troubleshooting work.
• Non-routine operations include commissioning, repair and maintenance of plants.

For risk assessments, you should:

• Use risk assessment methods that include the 3 basic steps of:
  
  • Hazard identification
  • Risk evaluation
  • Risk control
• Select control measures based on the principles of Hierarchy of Control.

You need to build a multidisciplinary team to conduct risk assessments.

Risk assessment team

You should include the following members in your risk assessment team:

• Management
• Process or facility engineers
• Technical staff
• Supervisors
• Production operators
• Maintenance staff
• Safety staff
• Contractors and suppliers

The team leader should be trained in risk assessment. Alternatively, you can hire a trained and experienced safety consultant to help conduct the risk assessment.

At the broadest level, risk management is a system of people, processes and technology that enables an organization to establish objectives in line with values and risks.

A successful risk assessment program must meet legal, contractual, internal, social and ethical goals, as well as monitor new technology-related regulations. By focusing attention on risk and committing the necessary resources to control and mitigate risk, a business will protect itself from uncertainty, reduce costs and increase the likelihood of business continuity and success.
Three important steps of the risk management process are risk identification, risk analysis and assessment, and risk mitigation and monitoring.

Risk identification is the process of identifying and assessing threats to an organization, its operations and its workforce. For example, risk identification may include assessing IT security threats such as malware and ransomware, accidents, natural disasters and other potentially harmful events that could disrupt business operations.

Risk analysis involves establishing the probability that a risk event might occur and the potential outcome of each event. Risk evaluation compares the magnitude of each risk and ranks them according to prominence and consequence.

Risk mitigation refers to the process of planning and developing methods and options to reduce threats to project objectives. A project team might implement risk mitigation strategies to identify, monitor and evaluate risks and consequences inherent to completing a specific project, such as new product creation. Risk mitigation also includes the actions put into place to deal with issues and effects of those issues regarding a project.

Risk management is a nonstop process that adapts and changes over time. Repeating and continually monitoring the processes can help assure maximum coverage of known and unknown risks.

Risk response strategies and treatment

There are five commonly accepted strategies for addressing risk. The process begins with an initial consideration of risk avoidance then proceeds to three additional avenues of addressing risk (transfer, spreading and reduction). Ideally, these three avenues are employed in concert with one another as part of a comprehensive strategy. Some residual risk may remain.

What are the most common responses to risk?

Risk avoidance

Avoidance is a method for mitigating risk by not participating in activities that may negatively affect the organization. Not making an investment or starting a product line are examples of such activities as they avoid the risk of loss.

Risk reduction

This method of risk management attempts to minimize the loss, rather than completely eliminate it. While accepting the risk, it stays focused on keeping the loss contained and preventing it from spreading. An example of this in health insurance is preventative care.

Risk sharing

When risks are shared, the possibility of loss is transferred from the individual to the group. A corporation is a good example of risk sharing — a number of investors pool their capital and each only bears a portion of the risk that the enterprise may fail.

Transferring risk

Contractually transferring a risk to a third-party, such as, insurance to cover possible property damage or injury shifts the risks associated with the property from the owner to the insurance company.

Risk acceptance and retention

After all risk sharing, risk transfer and risk reduction measures have been implemented, some risk will remain since it is virtually impossible to eliminate all risk (except through risk avoidance). This is called residual risk.

Limitations and risk management standards

Risk management standards set out a specific set of strategic processes that start with the objectives of an organization and intend to identify risks and promote the mitigation of risks through best practice. Standards are often designed by agencies who are working together to promote common goals, to help to ensure high-quality risk management processes. For example, the ISO 31 000 standard on risk management is an international standard that provides principles and guidelines for effective risk management.

While adopting a risk management standard has its advantages, it is not without challenges. The new standard might not easily fit into what you are doing already, so you could have to introduce new ways of working. And the standards might need customizing to your industry or business. 

What is your definition of risk management?

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