What Risks Do We Add to Our Risk Register and what might the Risk Register look like?
- romanhaluszczak4
- Feb 27, 2021
- 3 min read
It is evident that we need to have a list of risks that we need to incorporate into our risk register .
How do we do this?
We need to try and generate our own list of risks but we also need to draw on lists of existing risks.
By combining these approaches we can hopefully garner most existing risks that an organisation may face.
It is a great way forward and will be examined further in this blog along with a draft risk register that people can follow.
Certain risks which should form the backbone of any risk register must unclude:
Climate change
The likelihood and results of pandemics
The consequences of the UK leaving the EU
Further risks which we need to consider will be examined below.
Risk can be strategic, operational or tactical and organisations need to identify the risks they face and to decide which to manage actively.
This is part of the horizon scanning agenda which all organisations should be part of!
Each year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) presents the results of their Global Risks Perception Survey. It collates the views of nearly 1,000 decision-makers from the public sector, private sector, academia and civil society.
This is a very useful start for any organisation which wishes to examine the potential risks it faces.
The report categorises risk as follows:
Economic vulnerabilities
Geopolitical tensions
Societal and political strains
Environmental fragilities
Technological instabilities
The chart below shows the top risks from each category plotted against impact and likelihood.
Watch the video below to see how those risks have changed over time. This video has been provided by Coventry University and is well worth watching.
UK National Risk Register
The National Risk Register (NRR) for Civil Emergencies 2017 explains the risks of major emergencies that could affect the UK in the next five years and provides resilience advice and guidance.
While the focus of the NRR might be on the role of national and local government and on other Category 1 & 2 responders, the NRR can be used by other organisations or members of the public to plan for and respond to disruptive events. These include risks in the broad sense.
The NRR represents the most comprehensive and systematic attempts at substantiating risk knowledge by government ministries (Hiscock and Jones 2017) and similar national-level risk registers have been developed elsewhere in the world.
Additionally, in the UK, national-level tools such as the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment may also provide support.
the UK, local-level risks can be accessed via Community Risk Registers eg West Midlands Community Risk Register
Each local government area has a local resilience forum which has its own list of risks which feeds into the national risk register or NRR.
All local resilience forums in England can be accessed through the website below. This will give readers an excellent view of what the major risks are in each area of England.
The website of the Yorkshire and Humber resilience forum is given below:
This is one of many such forums. Please access the site or pick out a forum relevant to you!
The main risks that the forum has identified that the region faces are:
Severe weather
Health pandemic
Electricity loss
Malicious attack
The link to the relevant risk ebook for Yorkshire and Humber is here:
There are therefore several ways you can access or discover what risks your organisation can be facing.
You need to do that before you can plot a pathway to resilience!!
So what might a final risk register look like?
Please see the illustrative risk register below:
This is a classic 5 x5 risk register. Is this a process you go through to allocate your resources effectively?
This blog is linked to public benefit risk and resilience challenges which I define as a specialist area which is often neglected in resilience studies.
Resilience seems to focus on the private sector challenges not on the challenges the public sector faces.
That is why I am piloting a public resilience blog. I want to develop resilience as a public benefit challenge.
I will put forward a more public sector orientation of the resilience debate in subsequent posts.
Meanwhile please identify the risks your organisation faces.
Do it now!
Comments