Dive Brief:
- Employee training is the top risk-management strategy for many HR leaders, according to a report from the Risk Institute at the Ohio State University Fisher College of Business.
- Eighty percent of survey respondents put "ensuring employees are properly trained" at the top of their lists of risk defenses. Rounding out the top five were "ensuring key roles are filled," "ensuring employees do high-quality work," "preventing the loss of key employees" and "preventing employee shortage."
- When asked why risk management isn’t as involved in HR as other business functions, more than 40% of the HR leaders said that other priorities kept them from addressing risk management concerns, and nearly a third said that risk management teams don’t sufficiently reach out to HR.
Dive Insight:
HR's risk-management priorities may be right on track. Employment experts regularly say that untrained managers pose a significant compliance risk. And untrained employees can create problems in areas ranging from harassment to cybersecurity.
But the disconnect between HR and risk management departments may be cause for concern. HR leaders in the survey seem to know that high turnover and a lack of talent also create risk — a concern shared by senior executives, according to a recent Gartner study.
To prevent problems associated with the talent shortage, HR pros will need to find a way to have a voice in the discussion. "Previous hiring strategies for coping with talent disruptions are insufficient in this environment," Matt Shinkman, Gartner's practice VP, said in announcing those findings, "and risk managers have a key role to play in collaborating with HR in developing new approaches."
