What employees must do in the first place is a thorough soul-searching before getting into such nefarious acts that do no good to anyone but serious harm to the reputation of their company that has been earned the hard way. Blogging can be for fun, but not at the cost of compromising their organizational interests. Picking up informal bites from here and there, and stitch them together to make interesting reading is not blogging any way. What totally deviates from facts, and challenges the decorum of a firm and the principles of risk management cannot be termed as blogs.

Rumors spread faster than the forest fire through the internet. Such infamous reports can always be swept by leading search engines to other directions and a cunning reporter will only be too pleased to prepare a headline out of nothing. Remember, ‘ordinary’ journalists are never in the habit of cross-checking facts, and for them anything and everything that is half cooked is worth publishing. The real sufferers, therefore, are none other than the bosses who feed these employees with great care. The irony is that even the top brass of the company comes to know about the dirty designs only through the media, and in the process made to suffer a severe loss of face in the eyes of the public for no fault of theirs.

No doubt, such meaningless and misdemeanor acts by the employees intended to malign the image of their company need to be condemned in a strong and single voice, in addition to being dealt with an iron hand. After all, malicious campaigns cannot be permitted to gain public attention in the guise of blog writing. Mere termination from service looks insufficient and the guilty must be made to pay a much heavier price, including a jail term, so that such instances go a long way to open the half-closed eyes of the other anti-company employees who must be made to realize what ideal risk management is all about.

Of late, a large number of organizations have given their employees the liberty to participate in free and fair discussions on a mutually agreed platform on various topics pertaining to the company, but restricting themselves very much within the four walls of the organization. There is no need for the employees to engage in mud-slinging against their employers when they’re quite aware that company house journals are not meant for sale, and employees themselves are no investigative journalists.

On their part, employers must evolve a legitimate blog policy and new risk management standards that will clearly define the limitations of the employee besides initiating fresh moves to educate the workforce on the dangers of indulging in yellow-blogging, a term comparable to yellow journalism. It will only be a prudent step to subject all blogs to thorough scanning so that those found out of text can be straight away dumped into the dust bin.

Without mincing words, employees must be warned of the likely consequences, including legal, in case they fail to adhere to the company’s code of conduct. Those found to be violating the company tenets must be shown the door, and efforts must also be taken to prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.

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If you’re looking for an ERM reference of the concepts you have previously used or if you’re a risk expert in the making, you will see elements of enterprise risk management in the concepts listed below.

Risk Management Activities

You may have been part of:

1. An acquisition review,
2. A due diligence review,
3. Contingency planning,
4. An operational assessment,
5. A facilitated upper-management meeting,
6. A merger and acquisition review, or
7. Risk management.

Consider the following your Business Dictionary for readily defining these concepts, even if you’re new to the ERM world:

ERM Nomenclature

Acquisition planning coordinates activities of the personnel involved in the purchase of a supply or asset to make sure acquisition goes smoothly, on schedule, quickly, and in a cost-effective manner.

Contingency planning is undertaken to ensure that immediate and effective risk management efforts will be undertaken by leadership and teams in the case of an emergency. The fundamental objectives of contingency planning are to ensure:

1. containment of damage or injury to, or loss of, personnel and property, and
2. continuity of the key operations of the organization.

Due diligence is a measure of prudence, responsibility, and diligence that is expected from, and ordinarily exercised by, a reasonable and prudent person under the circumstances.

An Operational assessment evaluates the suitability and effectiveness of a system through a process intended to:

1. identify gaps, defects, and areas of risk,
2. measure the output adequacy, sufficiency, and reliability, and
3. assess operational reliability.

Risk management includes the practices, procedures, and  policies necessary to identify, analyze, assess and control risks.   A company may choose to mitigate risks based upon simply embracing the risk, risk transfer, risk retention, risk avoidance, or any other risk management strategy (or set of strategies) in proper management of future events.

Often the new expert in a job role must attain a working knowledge of the industry jargon and buzzwords as part of their initial risk management training.  If you find yourself as your company’s enterprise risk management expert you are going to see these terms regularly.

So, what’s the bottom line? – Mitigate the risks in your business and profit model immediately. Apply this information to improve your profitability, re-engineer business models, and strengthen or gain competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Let me know: How could this article could be made more useful for you?

Apply the free Fiscal Test and see where your leaks are.  From the author of the forthcoming book, ‘Stick Out Your Balance Sheet & Cough: Best Practices for Long Term Business Health’, Gary W Patterson - Copyright 2009

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