Call to Action 5: Leveraging the Risk Professional

 

 

This article is part one of a series unpacking the five Call To Actions in IRMSA’s 2021 Risk Report. To learn more about the five CTAs and the report, please read this blog from thryve’s Managing Director.

Risk management roles are currently undergoing a transformation, moving from a reactive support role to a proactive strategic position. This shift places a new responsibility on the risk management industry. IRMSA’s fifth call to action states that organisations must expect more from their risk management functions and practitioners, including to grow the ranks of risk managers. There should be more focus on enticing newcomers into the discipline and opportunities to train their abilities. In the words of the report, the right training is key.

Most of CTA 5 focuses on IRMSA’s strategy around training. But there are other ways to promote risk management’s development. The call for more risk professionals mirrors the growing demand for risk management itself in a high-paced yet fragile world. That demand stems directly from inside companies needing more awareness through risk information and context.

As we mention in this series’ previous CTA articles, part of the trend is enabling risk processes beyond the risk manager, placing them in front of the people who need that risk feedback loop to tackle their other responsibilities confidently. Self-service portals, deploying various risk frameworks, bespoke reporting, and consolidating different score weights are all examples of this philosophy – what we call Integrated Risk Management – in action.

All the above and other solutions that enable organisation-wide risk management also translates into exposure to the discipline. One of IRMSA’s points calls for boards, executives, managers and such to support risk management’s development. What better way to establish such support than to give them some of the tools of the trade so that they can contextualise risk management’s value around their activities?

This approach won’t train new risk managers, but it will bring enlightenment to the business on what risk management can do and how to leverage it for better results. And an organisation that appreciates something will cultivate it.

thryve supports IRMSA’s call to train risk professionals. We believe that, through risk management software such as Riskonnect, you can bring that mountain to the business and build a culture where risk management holds more value than the silo that, until recently, it’s been occupying.

The logic lines up with why risk management is more valued today due to the high demands on organisations to survive and thrive. It draws from the same well that states we should produce more risk managers.

At thryve, we know that more people should be introduced to risk management through flexible technology platforms and services. These capabilities were not always available (or were prohibitively expensive). Today they are capable, affordable and flexible. Using modern risk management technologies and an orchestration partner such as thryve, every company can start leveraging risk professionals and risk management in new and exciting ways.