Every day in businesses across industries, there are myriad negative events occurring within a company’s workforce, which can include full-time employees to part-time staff and contractors. These events can range from absenteeism, performance issues and complaints from peers to cybersecurity infractions, control access violations and physical crime. Often, these events are benign and have little impact on the company. But, in other cases, they are highly detrimental and can result in many millions of dollars in losses. They can go against the company’s policies or even against the law. But, one thing is usually common across all of these events. Typically, the company finds out about the unmanaged risks ONLY after an event has occurred. By then, the unfortunate damage is done.
The ability to proactively evaluate, diagnose and mitigate workforce risk by knowing and understanding all risk factors is critical. Companies must move from a reactive to a proactive workforce risk management approach. The days where risk management is only associated with IT and financial monitoring are over. Leaders now know it takes a C-level focus across the entire enterprise including security, compliance, technology and human resources to truly address workforce risk.