Risk & Business

After you have Identified and analyzed risk then you have to control risk. There are a few options to look at when deciding how to control risk in your business . You can avoid risk by making the necessary changes in your business to stop a particular exposure. You can reduce risk by changing an operation or procedure or by separating risk and duplicating processes to reduce risk. These are only a few of the steps a business owner can take to get a handle on controlling the risk in their business. In the next post I will discuss financing risk, which is how to pay for retaining risk or the benefits of transfering risk to an insurance company. Until next time be careful out there and know your risks.  K

A recent article in an industry blog, Comp Time, http://www.businessinsurance.com/section/blogs02, cites a large jump in uncollected insurance premiums. Apparently many employers are leaving their work comp carriers around audit time and finding another carrier. This is done to avoid paying any additional premium due. Many employers are signing up for work comp and drastically under reporting their payroll and then seek to avoid paying the premiums when an audit can turn up a higher actual payroll. The problem with this practice is that it drives up premium for everyone else and the employer will eventually be caught, and not only be subject to paying the premiums, but also can face prosecution.

After identifying your business risk the next step for business owners is to analyze the risk issues. You want to look at frequency and severity of identified risk. You want to make an assessment of the maximum possible loss to your organization from identified risks. You want to use some formulas to calculate the probability of loss and the potential impact risk could have on your business. Compare your projections against the loss data from your company's loss history. If this sounds like a lot of work, unfortunately it is. However in my opinion this is the most important step because it determines your action plan against risk. In my next post we will discuss controlling risk which comes after analysis. Until next time be careful out there. K Reblog this post [with Zemanta ]">

Image via Wikipedia While I'm sure that the acronym for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA , doesn't give small business owners a warm and fuzzy feeling, the agency does offer more than just their standard enforcement activity. Advertised on their website , www.osha.gov, they have a compliance assistance web page , http://www.osha.gov/dcsp/compliance_assistance/index.html, that provides small business' information directly relating to compliance and they also offer free onsite consultation services to help in compliance and in the prevention of onsite injuries. The site is full of information and can only help. Take a look sometime. Remember, it's FREE.

In previous posts I reviewed the risk management process as a part of the total Enterprise Risk Management program of a business . To identify potential risks in each segment of your business you should use a checklist or flowchart . There are many websites and resources out there specific to your business to obtain these tools. The use of a checklist will give you questions and references you need to ask yourself each time you identify risk. Also a checklist gives you years of expertise and knowledge developed by others in your business. Finally, everytime you are in the process of identification of risk, the checklist will give you peace of mind that you are not forgetting anything. Until next time be careful out there and know your risks!   K