Plans are useless – what counts are trained managers and well-defined teams. That was one of the comments to come out of a survey of 959 members and contacts of the Institute of Risk Management.
IRM chair Iain Wright said: “In 2020 that world was turned upside down as a long observed, although perhaps not sufficiently managed, risk – global pandemic – became a live issue. We were pleased that nearly 1000 of IRM’s members and contacts around the world were able at such a busy time to contribute to this survey. Our aims were to find out how risk management functions were responding to the crisis, whether their plans were working, what had proved helpful to their response and what had not, how this situation might affect the development of the profession and what we should be learning from it.
“It appears that our community is fully engaged with the pandemic response, with 98 per cent still at – appropriately distanced – work, dealing with current issues and preparing for the future. Good technology, good communications and good leadership have been rightly highlighted as the key positive factors in maintaining operations. Although there are realistic concerns about the scale of what has happened and what will happen, many reported how their personal and organisational investment in risk management expertise has paid off.
“For the future we expect to see a sharper focus on resilience and on strategic risk management. These topics have been around for some time but this period of crisis will focus attention on ensuring organisations have the people and skills to raise their game to what will be required in ‘the new normal’.
“And we mustn’t allow the magnitude of the current crisis to obscure the other major (and interconnected) risks that we all face. We still need to tackle climate change, cyber risk, supply chain disruption, economic and geo-political volatility, to mention just a few.”
For the full survey findings visit https://www.theirm.org/. The IRM includes several special interest groups, including cyber.
