INTRODUCTION
A risk can be defined as a probability or threat of damage, injury, liability, loss, or any other negative occurrence that is caused by external or internal vulnerabilities, and that may be avoided through preemptive action.[1]
MAIN BODY
Brainstorming: Brainstorming involves a group of people working together to identify potential risks, causes, failure modes, hazards and criteria for decisions and/or options for treatment. Brainstorming should stimulate and encourage free-flowing conversation amongst group of knowledgeable people without criticizing or rewarding ideas. It is one of the best and most popular ways to identify both risks and key controls and is the basis for most risk workshops.
Interviews: During a structured interview, interviewees are asked a set of prepared questions to encourage the interviewee to present their own perspective and thus identify risks. Structured interviews are frequently used during consultation with key stakeholders when designing the risk management framework. As an example, structured interviews are good to gauge risk appetite and tolerance when developing risk appetite statements.
Checklists: Checklists are pre-populated lists of hazards, risks or control failures that have been developed usually from experience, either as a result of a previous risk assessment or as a result of past failures. Auditors often prepare checklists of key controls to aid in their assessment of control effectiveness and the internal control environment.
Structured “What-if” Technique (SWIFT): This is a systematic, team based exercise, where the facilitator utilizes a set of ‘prompt’ words or phrases to stimulate participants to identify risks. One organization was looking at reducing service levels in a number of areas to reduce its operating costs and SWIFT was used to analyze the impact of each reduced to a tolerable level, the service level was maintained.
Incident Analysis: Incidents are risks that have now occurred. Recording incidents in a register , conducting root cause analysis and periodically running some trend analysis reports to analyze incidents, can potentially enable new risks to be identified. In addition, a high frequency of like incidents can be a lead risk indicator to a potentially larger problem.
Direct observations: This relatively simple technique is used daily in the workplace by staff who may observe risky situations and hazards regularly. It is also used by emergency services when attending to an emergency and is a form of dynamic risk assessment. It is also heavily used by Workplace Health & Safety professionals during inspections and audits. A risk aware culture and well trained staff will improve people’s ability to observe potential risks and implement controls before the risk eventuates into an accident.
Credit: The work prepared by scholastica mtutuma contributor of legusc and student at Moshi cooperative university (Mocu)
REFERENCES
1. www.businessdictionary.com
2. manual book prepared by mwakisiki E. Mwakisiki
Citations
[1] http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/risk.html
