If you want to manage risk within your firm, you need to familiarize yourself with risk-management language. Here are some basic definitions, provided by the National Alliance for Insurance Education & Research, which you can use to build your knowledge base:
- Exposure: A situation, practice or condition that might lead to a loss; an activity or resource (assets, people).
- Peril: A “cause” of loss; an event that might cause a loss.
- Hazard: A condition within an exposure that might lead to an incident; “a peril about to happen.”
- Incident: An event that disrupts normal activities and might become a loss or claim; “a near miss.” Lifecycle of an incident: Pre-incident, incident, immediate post-incident, post incident, rehabilitation (repair, recovery).
- Accident: An incident resulting in injury or damage to person or property which has, or will become, a loss or claim; “an unplanned event definite as to time and place that causes bodily injury or property damage.”
- Occurrence. An accident with the limitation of time removed.
- Loss: A reduction in value.
- Claim: A demand or obligation for payment as a result of a loss.
- Frequency: The number of times an incident occurs.
- Severity: The monetary impact of a loss.
- Expected losses: Loss projections (“loss pics”) based on probability distributions and statistics; frequently developed using actuarial techniques.
For a complimentary review of the risks your business faces, please feel free to contact us at any time.
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Businesses are transferring more and more client information files online for storage on hard drives in remote data centers or server farms that offer convenient Internet access. Buying space in this “cloud” (a $40 billion a year business, according to the IDC research firm) is becoming as common as paying for power, water and Internet service. With corporate spies after trade secrets, hackers out to steal sensitive financial information, and the federal government demanding online communications records, protecting data in the cloud creates a serious security risk for companies of all sizes.
“It’s easy to overlook security because of the virtual nature of the cloud,” warns Thomas Trappler, Director of Software Licensing at UCLA. “Your data is going over the Internet to another computer and not to some magical world where everything’s going to be fine.” Unfortunately, businesses often seem blissfully unaware of this threat: a recent nationwide study by the Ponemon Institute found that half the firms surveyed had not considered security risks when storing data with providers in the cloud.
A major question in these deals is determining who’s responsible for the risk of compromised data. Because companies often lack security expertise, they expect cloud providers to do the job. Some providers certify that they meet government or third-party standards for data confidentiality. However, few of them let clients test their digital security – which leaves their clients feeling that they might be liable.
To minimize this risk, Trappler advises businesses to:
- Evaluate the provider’s reputation.
- Insist on reviewing its encryption and security systems.
- Set guidelines for immediate notification of any breaches.
You can also protect yourself from the risks of storing data in the cloud by investing in Cyber Insurance. To learn more, just get in touch with us.
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If your employees slip up in using personal protective equipment, the results can be dangerous, if not deadly.
Among many health and safety professionals, PPE comes in last place—behind engineering controls and work practice or administrative controls – because it only addresses hazards indirectly and has the most potential failure points.
One of these potential points involves interaction between the worker and equipment, when employees make critical mistakes in the care, use, and replacement of PPE.
- Mistake No. 1: Improper care. For example, a worker takes her foam earplugs out to consult with another worker about a problem, and then rolls the earplugs again with dirty hands before reinserting them. At the end of the day, she leaves the earplugs inside her hard hat and re-uses them the next workday.
- Mistake No. 2: Misuse. A worker wearing a fall protection harness leaves the harness loose, but pulls the lanyard tight. Another worker who uses a respirator at work decides to grow a beard.
- Mistake Number 3: Failure to replace PPE as needed. Let’s say that a supervisor whose workers are supposed to use a new pair of chemical protective gloves each day, decides he will save his department money by telling workers to use each pair of gloves for a week before replacing them. After all, they still look fine after a week. Equipment should be changed 1) after each shift, it it’s disposable (gloves protective clothing, etc.). 2) whenever it shows signs of wear and tear or damage. 3) on schedule, if it’s reusable and must be replaced before exceeding its useful life. and 4) after a save, for single-use PPE, such as hardhats, fall protection harnesses and lanyards.
A word to the wise …
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11 years ago
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by
Shawna Kreis ·
Comments Off on Employee Advocacy: How to target and recruit the right employees
Employees are more than just a warm body in your office. Being able to target and recruit the right ones not only makes your life run more smoothly, they actively bring your company closer to the goals you have set for it. There are three top priorities you need to keep in mind when you need to find an employee to fit your next job vacancy.
1. Position Criteria
The first step to finding the right employee is to know exactly what skills and knowledge you want them to bring to your organization. You also need to determine if this criteria can be obtained with experience, schooling or both. Consider the culture of your company and those attributes that successful employees must have to fit in there.
2. Recruitment Methods
These days, in order to obtain a diverse pool of applicants, you will likely need to advertise utilizing a variety of methods. While newspaper ads have fallen out of favor somewhat due to the rise in popularity of the internet, consider posting your job opening in a variety of different media outlets to capture the attention of as many qualified job seekers as possible.
3. Make Your Job Posting Count
Your job posting is the critical bridge that helps you connect with the right applicants. Partly an advertisement for your business and partly a laundry list of attributes you want the perfect job applicant to possess, your job posting needs to include key information. This includes items such as the opportunities that are available for applicants, what you expect from the person who fills the job opening and a synopsis of your company’s goals.
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11 years ago
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by
Shawna Kreis ·
Comments Off on Employee Advocacy: Key elements of employee advocacy that successful programs share
Using your employees as ambassadors for your brand is a fantastic method for getting your name recognition to reach further than you ever thought possible. That being said, there are certain key elements that successful employee advocacy programs share. Learn more about them below.
Formulate a Plan
While it can be tempting to let your employees loose on their favorite social media platform to talk it up about your business. it is not an efficient way of going about this. Instead, decide which social media outlet would be the best place to focus your energies and have your employees stick with it. Using only one platform will make judging the results of your employee advocacy program much easier as well.
Create Training Materials
Before you set your employees loose on your chosen social media outlet to talk up the many virtues of your company, develop training materials that explicitly outline your goals and objectives. While some of your employees will want to use their existing social media accounts, there are others might want to create new ones. In addition to providing resources on how to do so, this training can designate a person as the guru of the employee advocacy program as well as identify ways for employees to determine how effective their efforts are.
Make a Social Media Policy
Even though most employees are not malicious and would not purposely tarnish the reputation of your business, there are behaviors that can reflect badly upon it — and even put its future at risk. Outline some common scenarios such as how to handle complaints, who should talk to reporters and how to determine the difference between undertaking an expert’s stance and simply being a bystander in the conversation.
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11 years ago
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by
Shawna Kreis ·
Comments Off on Employee Advocacy: Strategies to boost employee participation
It is no secret that your employees are you most valuable asset, but do they know that? As the lines between professional and personal life become even blurrier with each passing day — thanks in large part to social media — it is crucial to your business’s success to harness the power and knowledge of your happy employees. Here are some ideas to get them more involved in the process.
1. Encourage your employees to own your company. Employees who feel like they are part of the success of a business are more likely to engage in positive social media interactions about that company. Position your employees as thought leaders within your business as well as the industry.
2. Trust your employees. When you use your employees to engage on social media platforms about your business, you are handing over a certain amount of trust to them. While that can be difficult to do — and, yes, sometimes it does backfire — because they are your employees, encouraging them to be advocates for your brand brings an increase in respectability as well as trust from those who are reading their postings.
3. Allow employees to have free reign. When people post about a company, it has a different feel than when the owners do so. There is a more intimate feeling involved when one of your employees posts to their friend’s timeline, for example, about how her employer — your business — offers the exact services he finds himself in need of. This casual and friendly interaction helps your business name and brand reach a larger audience, a methodology that has proven to increase sales and profits.
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