Why conduct
Few organisations have been able to reliably measure their risk culture, yet the buck stops with boards, CEOs and senior management to ensure an appropriate risk culture is maintained.
Also, few organisations can confidently answer the important question: “Is the organisation’s culture, both overall and in each area, sufficiently robust to ensure that all significant risks are identified and appropriately managed?”
Despite the many millions of dollars that have been invested in risk management systems and resources, risk systems continue to fail around the world, with disastrous consequences. These failures have often been a result not of the systems, but of a poor risk culture.
Most people understand the importance and benefits of a regular medical check up to identify any risks to their health and to determine whether their bodies are functioning to their optimal capacity.
In a similar way, Insync Surveys recommends organisations regularly use its Employee Risk Culture Survey to determine the “health” of their risk culture, and how their risk culture could be improved.
Conducting an Employee Risk Culture Survey also sends a message to your people about the importance your organisation places on having an appropriate risk culture and appropriate risk behaviours.
Whilst an Employee Risk Culture Survey is unlikely to prevent the failure of an organisation’s risk systems, it can be an important part of a risk assessment process that identifies weaknesses and areas for improvement in an organisation’s risk culture and risk management practices.
The Employee Risk Culture Survey was initially designed for large banks, finance and insurance organisations. It has also been tailored for other public and private companies, government and not-for-profit entities.
The Employee Risk Culture Survey can be completed by all employees or a representative sample thereof. Senior employees can do the same survey and have additional survey statements that are only applicable to them.
The comprehensive report that is prepared following the completion of the survey is designed to measure the risk culture of the overall organisation and segments thereof and to highlight improvement initiatives.
Internally self administered surveys
Some of the small number of organisations that conduct an Employee Risk Culture Survey use their own internal self administered survey to assess their effectiveness. Some of the limitations of using such surveys, however, include:
- they are rarely comprehensive in the issues they address
- the survey statements are often inappropriately worded and untested
- the survey process can be prone to bias and often lacks statistical rigour
- they do not promote candour as respondent anonymity isn’t protected
- without benchmarking or an appropriate gap analysis, the results are often incorrectly interpreted
