Changes are coming hard and fast all over the world; changes that require adaptable risk management strategies by organisations. What are some of the big trends to keep an eye out for during 2022? For the sake of brevity - because the list could easily contain dozens of important trends - we’ll have a look at three big ones to keep an eye on in the coming months:
1. Bigger, More Robust Cybersecurity Strategies
It seems that regardless of the pandemic situation, remote work is here to stay. The big shift in the past two years to remote and hybrid work schedules has now become the norm for millions of Australians, but it comes with new cybersecurity risks and challenges.
While IT teams and managers often struggle to implement best practices such as only using corporate-owned devices and secure network connections (e.g. VPNs), a huge percentage of employees continue to use personal laptops and devices for work-related activities.
It should be obvious how much of a security threat this can potentially pose. Cybercriminals are already one step ahead of the game and have exploited vulnerabilities with costly data breaches, compromising personally identifiable information and causing severe damage.
Risk managers must be keenly aware of the risks involved with remote work and all of the habits and processes involved in performing work tasks from remote locations.
2. Adaptability to Supply Chain Disruptions
Supply chains are the lifeblood of our economy, keeping food on shelves and critical components coming into warehouses and manufacturing plants for that wonderful just-in-time delivery systems around the world.
Even a minimal disruption to the supply chains can lead to massive logistical problems. The bullwhip effect was widely known in logistics before the pandemic, but the rapid growth of e-commerce in the past few years, amongst other factors, has shown just how fragile our supply chains actually are.
Risk management professionals should, if they aren’t already, be keeping close tabs on the risks posed by supply chain disruptions.
3. Employee Retention During the Great Resignation
There are a number of reasons as to why employees have begun walking off the job in numerous industries en masse, far too many to go over here, but suffice to say that the Great Resignation is no conspiracy theory but is now a widely known fact. This phenomenon has been nothing short of a struggle for even the best HR professionals and has brought forth the necessity to improvise better employee retention programmes and schemes to keep the best talent.
Hiring and training new employees is always a good thing for a growing organisation, but it is a costly endeavour. The risks involved with employees quitting in the past year require careful and realistic risk assessments that consider multiple factors. For many employees, the demotivating factor could be salary, but it could also be work culture, which is a lot more challenging to quantify.
In addition to the above three trends, some of the big trends - and one could say that these are the elephants in the room - are the government restrictions related to the pandemic as well as vaccination mandates. These types of trends are certainly worth following closely, but are also contentious topics that require the utmost care and due diligence.
Risk Wizard
Improve how your organisation assesses real-world risks with robust software solutions from Risk Wizard