In our second of the series on ‘people and risk’ I have taken a look at Terrorism as the second most significant risk identified by the Corporate Executive Programme.
There are also some broader implications that organizations need to consider such as dealing with international mobility (which is strongly impacted by the fear of terrorist attacks).
Applying these risks to ‘everyday business’ raises the question about your ability to retain key employees (and, if necessary, replace them) as part of normal talent retention challenges. Employee motivation is key to retention. Studies all show that pay is not the prime reason for losing employees. You should adopt an holistic approach to employee retention – understanding and addressing underlying causes in a way that improves your employee productivity as well as retention. You should also consider developing contingency plans for dealing with the loss of critical staff – this fits with succession planning but should be more targeted. Once again, the costs of good management practice and prevention are significantly lower than the cost of dealing with the problem itself.
Tackling People Risk
As with any business project a planned, step-wise approach will give you the best results. First establish the business drivers and imperatives – is this to address a specific issue or concern? Or do you want to seek to overhaul your approach in order to gain competitive advantage? Ensure that you balance your efforts between benefit realisation and compliance – both are essential for sustained improvement.