Creating a risk management plan for your SME business
Does your business have a risk management plan? How will you manage if a catastrophe occurs?
A risk management plan helps to prepare for these events, once you have identified the key risk concerns, you can ensure necessary precautions are taken to protect your business, together with the right type of insurances. Do you want to create your own risk management plan, but don’t know where to start, here are three easy to follow steps.
STEP 1: Identify all risks
What is your key concerns about your company, create a list of all potential risks to your business, no matter how insignificant. Think about your business and its daily operations, all the people on your payroll, their roles and responsibilities, and then think about what events could cause an impact.
There are risks that are common to all business, and businesses that will have their own specific risks; to help you make a start on your own list, consider the following issues:
- Fire
- Theft
- Vandalism
- Hacking
- Litigation
- Employee injuries
- Customer injuries
- New laws or standards
STEP 2: Identify exiting controls
Once you have a list of potential risks to your business, you need to establish the likelihood of each risk turning into reality, as well as how each disaster could actually occur, and the likely consequences.
When you know the trigger events for each disaster, you can identify the controls that are already in place, are they sufficient to minimise impact? or can they even prevent an event from happening.
By doing this you will then highlight the risks that have no current controls, you can arrange the necessary in place. Lastly, you need to list these risks in a decreasing order, so that you can identify the greatest risks to your business, as well as the least risks.
STEP 3: Work your plan
When you have created your risk management plan, you need to share it with your employees. Specifically it needs to be shared with people who have a role to play in either minimising the existing risks or in recovering from a disaster. You can also use your risk management plan as the basis for a customised insurance policy tailored to helping your business recover, in the event of an incident.
Lewis Insurance Services is here to help our clients with advice with protecting their business. To discuss further, please contact Lewis Insurance Services on 07 3217 9015 or send us an email by clicking here.
This article was published by our AFSL Licensee, Insurance Advisernet Australia P/L (18/12/2018)
Disclaimer:
This information and any accompanying material does not consider your personal circumstances as it is of a general nature only. You should not act on the information provided without first obtaining professional financial advice specific to your circumstances and considering the Product Disclosure Statement.