Risk Mitigation Strategies: How to Plan for the Worst
Table of Contents
Risk Mitigation Strategies: How to Plan for the Worst
The current state of corporate risk and how it affects your business strategy
How to identify and reduce the risks that impact your business
What are risk mitigation strategies?
Six tips to improve your risk management strategy
Conclusion: A resilient business is healthy
Every safety manager and employer would love to have a way to predict workplace accidents before they hurt an employee. Unfortunately, that does not exist yet. However, the good news is that risk mitigation strategies can be implemented now, preventing many of these accidents and, as a result, protecting your workers from injuries and harm.
Employers can proactively prepare their people and workplace for crises and emergencies through structured planning and assessment. This will ensure that response to these emergencies is efficient swift, and the chances for major injuries are lowered. Work performed on occupational health and safety (OHS) issues now will help and benefit both the employees and employer, in many ways, down the road.
The current state of corporate risk and how it affects your business strategy
Corporate risk is the company's probability of experiencing dangers that could jeopardize its goals and objectives. When developing your business strategy and safety protocols, you must incorporate any corporate and OHS risks into the planning and preparation.
To truly deal with and mitigate OHS hazards in your workplace, corporate risks and safety risks must be identified and documented before looking at how to eliminate them.
How to identify and reduce the risks that impact your business
To identify any significant risks, you need to perform an exhaustive hazard assessment, identifying all workplace safety hazards. At SafetyLine, we categorize occupational safety hazards into four sections:
Physical hazards (harmful noise levels)
Chemical hazards (skin burns)
Biological hazard (severe illness)
Ergonomic hazards (mobility injuries)
Psycho-social hazard (assault by public)
When performing a hazard assessment or a job safety analysis, include all employees involved and impacted, leveraging their expertise and experience to identify safety hazards that may not be obvious.
What are risk mitigation strategies?
Risk mitigation strategies are tactics that either reduce or eliminate a hazard that poses a significant safety risk to your workers. These strategies are proactive steps aimed at preventing specific safety hazards entirely or at least reducing the severity of the potential threat.
Your risk mitigation strategies are as unique to your organization and employees as the safety risks intended to mollify. Allocate a lot of time for your hazard assessment as it is an exercise and document that provides the basis for your risk mitigation strategies – the hazard assessment is as much about the process and “assessing” as it is the official record of identified safety risks.
These safety strategies will vary from worksite to worksite, but there are certain steps the employer can take overall to protect their team, including:
Automated check-in system
An automated or manual check-in system is a major component of any successful safety program. An automated check-in system, however, removes the possibility of human error and, therefore, any missed calls or alerts. Automated lone worker safety check-ins are effective, daily measures that will proactively confirm the worker’s safety without any interruption to work.
An emergency risk management plan
This and an emergency response plan will help prepare management for emergencies and crisis management, streamlining and improving the emergency response – and lowering safety hazard risks. An emergency action plan will also focus on the steps and actions needed to get the worker to safety.
Motion sensors and fall detection
In addition to careful, thorough planning, risk mitigation also relies on using technologies such as personal safety devices and motion sensors on smartphones and tablets to detect dangerous falls and impacts.
Establish a strong line of communication
A major benefit of using technology and devices for worker safety is that they usually provide channels for reliable communication. SafetyLine has text and voice messaging capabilities, allowing vulnerable workers to stay connected. Communication can provide valuable context to help emergency responders provide the best possible help. On top of that, reliable communication provides peace of mind to workers who could be experiencing a very stressful situation.
Accurate location monitoring
In an emergency or dangerous situation, it is crucial that the worker’s location can be determined quickly so that help can be immediately sent to the right place. When beyond cellular coverage, SafetyLine can be used with satellite and GPS devices to remain connected, allowing employers to protect their workers anywhere in the world.
Panic button
When employees work around members of the public, the risk of violence and physical and verbal assault is much higher. SafetyLine’s Bluetooth panic button is not only very effective but also very discreet and can be activated without anyone else knowing it has been pressed.
Six tips to improve your risk management strategy
1. Involve all levels of the organization
Most, if not all, of your risk mitigation strategies, will impact various roles and operations within your organization. Everyone affected must be consulted in risk assessment and risk mitigation strategy development. Additionally, it’s great for company morale and engagement when people are involved and on the same safety and wellness page.
2. Be flexible and adaptable
When developing your risk mitigation strategies, keep in mind that you must be flexible according to changing circumstances and personnel. Review and update regularly so your strategies remain effective and relevant to your OHS needs. While very important, these strategies should not be set in stone and must be adaptable to whatever is down the road.
3. Create a timeline
When will your hazard and risk assessments take place? How and when will these assessments be presented to management? Your risk management strategy must be organized and have a timeline before the first assessments. Even a rough timeline will keep the strategy on track and focused, allowing you and your workers to experience the most benefit of safety measures and processes.
4. Establish a budget early
Risk mitigation strategies don’t need to be costly to be effective. However, a budget must be established to prepare for such costs if new devices or technology are needed to mitigate certain safety hazards.
5. Establish a review process
When documenting your safety risks and hazards, they must go through a review process to prioritize which are most urgent and require immediate mitigation. Risk mitigation strategies must also be reviewed and approved to determine who will review them and at what stages.
6. Build a positive safety culture
Corporate risk and safety hazards can be alleviated when the company has a strong and positive safety culture amongst its staff and management. This type of environment is a workplace where employees feel safe to speak up about safety issues and where employees are looking out for the well-being of their coworkers as well as themselves.
Conclusion: A resilient business is healthy
Ultimately, dealing with corporate risk now is also about building resiliency in your company so that it is strong enough to deal with any emergencies and adversity in the future. Business risk and safety hazards are part of every company and industry, a reality that employers and employees must deal with. But in order to stay safe and stay operating, companies must tackle their corporate risk now to prevent emergencies and accidents from taking place. By addressing these issues in the present, the future will be much brighter and safer for your people and organization.