The Tribune

Identifying potential employee-related risks is the goal of human resource risk management. Businesses can avoid possible issues by ensuring they hire the right employees. It is vital to mitigate employee-related risk to maximise revenue, reputation, profitability and other aspects of their operations.

As part of risk management, it is essential to identify the most likely occurring scenarios and their possible outcomes. Whenever possible, human resource risk management experts seek to reduce risks. Unfortunately, human resource management (HRM) rarely discusses risk management or how appropriate ways of hiring, managing and developing employees can enhance organisational outcomes and mitigate operational risks.

In the first part of this series, we identified three critical human resource risks. These are employee health and well-being, productivity and turnover in the workplace. This article will seek to explore ways to reduce risk in the workplace.

Workflow Autonomy

According to research, people who do not have much control over how work is done suffer from poorer mental health and higher cardiovascular disease rates. Allowing employees to control how and where they complete tasks, while establishing agreed deliverables linked to company goals, will increase mental health resilience. Moreover, it is possible to make a significant difference in employee well-being even with relatively small changes in worker autonomy. The key is understanding and tackling the root cause of poor employee well-being.

Personalisation is essential to employee well-being

Employers can demonstrate they care about more than the bottom line by providing coaches, experts and counsellors - along with needed resources - to help employees develop strategies and skills tailored to their situations, strengths and values.

Strategic recruitment and hiring process

New employees should be hired promptly to avoid future problems. To ensure all candidates are properly vetted, this writer suggess that planning for your hiring needs in advance is best. It could be costly and damaging to the business if a reference check is not performed.

Human resources capacity assessments should be implemented and repeated every year at a minimum. Companies use this process to evaluate their needs and plan to meet them. It is imperative for human resource planning to be flexible enough to meet short-term staffing challenges as well as adapt to changing business conditions in the long run.

Efficient and effective onboarding

Implementing a comprehensive orientation programme prepares new employees at all levels for safe and effective work. Employers should ensure that all new staff complete the required onboarding and training. During the onboarding process, new hires can learn about what it will be like to work at the company and whether they will stay.

Unfortunately, Gallup statistics point to more than 70 percent of new employees noting that their onboarding experience left them feeling significantly unsupported and unprepared. An inadequate onboarding procedure can lead to a high turnover rate and decreased productivity, which is why each new team member should be provided with an onboarding plan tailored to their specific position.

Conclusion

In short, it is the responsibility of human resources management to ensure that the company and its employees are happy and on track with business objectives. For a firm to be successful, it is critical to focus on managing risks associated with health and well-being, productivity and turnover in the workplace.

• NB: About Derek Smith Jr

Derek Smith Jr. has been a governance, risk and compliance professional for more than 20 years. He has held positions at a TerraLex member law firm, a Wolfsburg Group member bank and a ‘big four’ accounting firm. Mr Smith is a certified anti-money laundering specialist (CAMS), and the compliance officer and money laundering reporting officer (MLRO) for CG Atlantic’s family of companies (member of Coralisle Group) for The Bahamas and Turks & Caicos.