Many UK Businesses Do Not Take Risk Culture Seriously: QBE Europe Survey

The vast majority of UK businesses (70 percent) are failing to address the importance of embedding a positive risk culture*, according to survey conducted by UK business insurance specialist QBE European Operations, which is part of Australia’s QBE Insurance Group.

QBE surveyed 377 risk decision-makers from small, medium sized and larger businesses throughout the UK to discover the extent to which companies have a positive risk culture embedded, the steps taken to achieve it and which actions had the most success.

Only three in 10 businesses felt that they had a positive risk culture embedded to a significant degree, said the survey.

Larger companies (250-plus employees) were almost twice as likely to have achieved this than smaller businesses (50 or less employees), said QBE.

The survey also found that the level of embedding is weaker in sectors such as leisure, manufacturing and telecoms compared to the professional and financial services sectors.

QBE noted that the majority of risk decision-makers interviewed had taken steps to develop the core components of a robust risk management program by getting buy-in from senior management, encouraging employees to speak out about risk related issues and providing regular training.

Nevertheless, many of these businesses has still failed to embed a positive risk culture, QBE said.

The difference between companies that have managed to imbed a positive culture and those that have not is the breadth of activities undertaken. For example, QBE said, successful businesses have to a much greater degree:

• identified what type of culture their business wants to have,
• publicized a set of key performance indicators on risk, and
• included positive risk management behaviors in employees’ annual assessment.

Richard Thomas, head of Risk Solutions at QBE commented: “Businesses are struggling to develop their risk management programs and our research suggests why. Implementation of a robust risk management culture reduces incidents which we know contributes to better productivity and enables operational cost savings. While risk managers are making good headway gaining senior level support, I would encourage them to capitalize on this and leverage the expertise of their insurer to extend their range of risk management activities.”

*QBE defined a positive risk management culture “as a set of shared beliefs and values about the importance of risk management – and the need to maintain an active focus on managing risk within day-to-day operations.”

Source: QBE Europe

Topics Trends Europe Leadership Risk Management