on Risk & Safety

Guest Post by Andrew Sheves (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Googling ‘what is a risk manager?’ will get you variations on ‘it’s the person who manages that organization’s risks,’ which is a pretty weak answer. It’s certainly not enough to help anyone who’s just starting in the role to understand what they’re supposed to do. Similarly, if someone’s thinking about this as a career, we need a bit more.

So here’s a more detailed answer.

Guest Post by Joseph Paris (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

It’s January 2020.  I have just made a pitch to the corporate big-wigs for a way to reduce their real-estate costs (premises including rent and utilities), their corporate travel costs, even their carbon footprint using the latest telephony and collaborative applications.  I postulate that they will even see an increase in productivity while improving their employee’s work-life balance; no more one-hour commutes each way.

Guest Post by Malcolm Peart (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

“Man measures time by happiness or sorrow, tranquility or torture.  The one is past and gone so quickly that is seldom seized and savored while the other turns the hours into days and the weeks into years”.  This was written by Major Pat Reid in “The Colditz Story” and, while it comes from a time of internment at a dark time in history the same is true today.

Guest Post by Patrick Ow (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Many valuable lessons can be learned from the failures of risk governance in Australian banks.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and Westpac Banking Corporation (Westpac), two of the largest banks in Australia had to provide Court Enforceable Undertakings in May 2018 and December 2021 respectively to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA).

Guest Post by Patrick Ow (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

The World Economic Forum has conducted a Global Risk Survey since 2006. This is the fifteenth survey. The responses are from 650 members of the World Economic Forum. In the preface to the 2021 Global Risk Report it is noted that: “In 2006, the Global Risks Report sounded the alarm on pandemics and other health-related risks.” (1) With this context in mind, the 2021 risk analysis “centers on the risks and consequences of widening inequalities and societal fragmentation. In some cases, disparities in health outcomes, technology, or workforce opportunities are the direct result of the dynamics the pandemic created.” (2)

This piece will review the results of the 2021 Global Risk Survey. It will also discuss some of the issues surrounding the survey.

Guest Post by Patrick Ow (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

While there is oftentimes a “generational war” between the young and the old in the workplace, where the divide is created by the younger generation’s familiarity with technology and the older generation’s aversion to it, the multigenerational concern that plagues all age groups is that technology will outpace humans, leaving many unemployed.

Guest Post by Patrick Ow (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

We obtain information through learning to become, hopefully, knowledgeable and this is achieved through the communication of data.  This communication is achieved through our five senses despite a belief by some in a mystical third-eye and the gifts of telepathy and ESP. 

Mankind’s communication abilities depend on sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell.  This basic toolbox of senses has been augmented, or some say ‘lessened’, over millennia through education and the evolution of culture and technology as our civilizations rise, and eventually, fall.