Role of a Risk Manager (Essay Sample)

Role of a Risk Manager
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Role of a Risk Manager
Introduction
Risk management is an activity, which aims at identifying and evaluating a firm’s risks, and consequently devising strategies of protecting the firm against the risks. Risk managers are the responsible personnel’s for the task. Apart from the responsibility, risk managers have other crucial roles in an organization. As such, risk managers help the organization in analyzing the potential risks to balance potential benefits against losses to avoid expensive mistakes. Risk managers, therefore, serve an important position, which is central to devising preventive measures rather than reactive measures. Therefore, all organizations must consider the essence of having a risk manager in their line of duties (Agrawal, 2009).
Integrating the Risk Management Program
Risk managers are the responsible position for devising the risk management program and subsequently integrating the risk management program within the organization. Risk managers have to approach the integration efforts strategically to ensure success. First, they take the role of issuing the organization with a statement, which employees should access. The same should include a proposed timetable and procedures involved in the risk management process. In addition, risk managers will initiate training because the organization is on the verge of having new practices. Considering that, the risk management-implementation process will include a plan; the risk manager will allocate specific responsibilities to different people. Such a move will aid in the implementation process.
Risk managers must also devise strategies to ensure employee-compliance with the risk management program within the organization. The risk manager appoints an individual whose main role is handling complaints in relation to suspected violations. However, during the training of employees, the risk manager educates employees concerning compliance, including how to raise compliance concerns. In addition, the appointed individual performs compliance risk evaluations with the employees. As a measure, in line with the risk management program, there should be an incident reporting system, where the appointed individual captures, tracks and monitors compliance issues (Garvey, 2008).
Challenges when Implementing a Risk Management Program
Developing the Program
When developing the risk management program, risk managers often face a number of challenges. In some cases, organizations often become reluctant to accept and address issues that the risk managers identifies as they assess the organization for risks. Failure of willingness from the administration predisposes the organization to significant risks, which after they occur; the risk manager becomes the blame. When developing a risk management program, there is a need to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the organization to identify the possible risks. As such, the team chosen may fail to identify all the risks in the organization adequately, only to encounter such challenges during the implementation stages.
Due to inadequate understanding of the concept of risk management, some organization’s stakeholders may find it unnecessary; hence, this lack of support undermines subsequent stages of the risk management program. Inadequate funds could also hinder the development of the program because the process requires money and resources. Even within the risk management team, it is possible to face conflicts, which could hinder the development of the program. When the program is not linked to the organizational goals, development becomes a problem, and there is significant wastage of time (Brown, 2008).
Communicating the Program
A common communication challenge in the development of risk management programs is central to resistance. Training is one way of communicating the program, and some employees may fail to attend the training, which will hinder successful implementation. Apart from this, others may fail to understand the objective of the program; hence, cause time wastage when trying to explain the program’s objective. Proper communication of the program requires the use of sub-committees or meetings. In the meetings, however, some of the members may fail to attend, which causes a lag to the timeline provided. Currently, the quickest way of communicating is using techn...