Most businesses exist for one major reason: to make money. You may well want to make a difference too, but that won’t be possible if your business is not first financially sustainable.
You can increase your level of financial sustainability, or your profit margin, by bringing in more revenue and cutting costs. But even then, unmanaged risk could bring all that careful growth crashing to the ground.
Are you doing enough to manage the risks to your business? Have you put together a risk management strategy? Have you asked yourself: what is the worst that could happen? And have you put a plan in place to deal with it proactively, rather than deal with the aftermath when it’s probably too late?
Here are four main areas of risk that you may want to take into account.
Criminal checks
If your business works with children or vulnerable adults then you should ensure safeguarding standards by having a process for taking out criminal checks on new recruits.
Checks can also be useful for any role where a new hire will be working with sensitive information, as well as any valuable possessions or equipment that may be located in the work area.
A criminal check doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t hire the individual, but it may help you manage them better and help them to stay on the right track. If you need more information, you can start by having a good understanding of DBS checks and how they can help you in the hiring process.
Insurance
Robberies, fires, natural disasters – these are all things that can cost your business thousands, and they often lead to businesses having to declare bankruptcy. One way of lessening the cost of such events occurring is to get insurance for your business. The monthly payment may set you back a bit, but it’s simply not worth the risk to go without insurance. There are various types of business insurance, and your insurance needs will depend on a lot of different factors.
Common business insurance policies include general liability insurance, workers’ compensation, and product liability insurance. Accidents that happen inside your business premises are covered by general liability insurance. For professional services, such as accounting and law firms, these businesses must have professional liability insurance to cover claims arising from errors or lapses. On the other hand, protect your employees and your business by getting workers’ compensation insurance to cover medical expenses in the event of a workplace accident.
Better security
It’s simple; the better your security, the smaller the chance of someone gaining access to your business. There are loads of ways to improve your business’s security, so you can easily customize your methods to fit your personal business needs. An easy and relatively cheap option – at least, when compared to the other options – is to install an alarm system, security cameras, or both. You could also hire a security company, but this then becomes a monthly expense, rather than a once-off expense. Keep in mind that security doesn’t only refer to physical security, but also cybersecurity. Businesses have a lot of confidential information, and it’s important to protect it.
Cybersecurity threats and attacks are rampant because bad actors use artificial intelligence and other modern technologies to capture and infiltrate business data and networks. Before it’s too late, strengthen your information technology (IT) infrastructure today. Prevent cybercriminals from stealing your customers’ data and the company’s digital assets and making money.
So, what are the concrete steps to improve your cybersecurity?
Experts recommend embracing technology to future-proof a business, boost its performance, and strengthen cybersecurity. You can hire an in-house IT cybersecurity team or outsource IT-related tasks from service providers like Timewade. Hiring the best IT support and embracing the right IT solutions, such as network firewalls, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and cloud data backup and security, can help detect and prevent cyberattacks through aggressive security measures.
Quality control
As someone running a business, you surely know how much time, resources, and money goes into the production of products. So, having a defective product – or an entire faulty batch – is not ideal. You’ll have to spend twice as many resources since you’ll need to redo everything. Having regular quality control checks as well as effective quality management will help you catch any potential problems before they spin out of control, effectively saving you money. No one likes quality checks – they can be boring and time-consuming. However, they are worth it. Understanding things such as cro meaning in business could help you manage your quality control processes more effectively. A chief revenue officer (CRO) helps businesses to grow profits. Similarly, understanding the meaning of other business terms can help you make better decisions for your company.
Depending on the nature of your business there may be other important risks to consider. Make sure that you complete a risk audit and put your plan in place to ensure that, if the worst happens, your business is prepared.