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New research shows the greatest likelihood and impact of 25 workforce-related threats facing employers worldwide according to human resource (HR) professionals and risk managers.
Marie-Josee Le Blanc
Partner and Health Innovation Leader at Mercer Marsh Benefits Canada.
People-related exposures, such as health and safety, governance and digitization have been rapidly rising up risk registers and are gaining increased board attention. In part, this trend has been accelerated as the pandemic clearly showed that threats to the health and well-being of the workforce threaten the overall resilience and success of a business.
By hearing first hand from 1,381 HR and risk managers worldwide, including 125 in Canada to get their views, we learned which people risks will have the most severe impacts, and the barriers preventing firms from mitigating them.
The Managing the People Side of Risk survey was conducted over March and April 2021 with 1,381 respondents across Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and Africa, North America, Pacific and the United Kingdom.
There was a split of 46% HR and 54% risk professionals and, with participation across a wide range of industries. The respondents also represented a cross-section of employer sizes.
Survey respondents were asked to assess the likelihood of the risk occurring in their organization in the next three years on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 representing a risk that is not very likely and 5 a risk that is very likely to occur. They also assessed severity of each risk’s impact on the business if it were to occur on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 representing no impact and 5 a catastrophic impact.
The risk rating score was calculated as a product of the likelihood and severity of the risk occurring.
Respondents were also asked to assess to what extent their organization is currently addressing the risk on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 representing not at all and 5 to a great extent.
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