High reliability organizations, active assailant risk management, and healthcare security are just a few of the topics that dominated the Lowers & Associates Risk Management Blog in 2017.
Here we provide a summary of our 7 most-read articles from 2017.
1. 5 Principles of High Reliability Organizations
High Reliability Organizations (HROs) are anomalies. They exist in the kind of very complex, fast-evolving environments where you would expect chaos to prevail. But it doesn’t. HROs are able to cope successfully with unexpected conditions. That’s what makes these unusual organizations so attractive to researchers. What can we learn from them?
2. When Active Assailant Situations Become Known-Unknowns
Not long ago, most Americans regarded active assailant incidents as black swan events, unpredictable and largely indefensible. However, with the increasing frequency of these events, the time is at hand when venue owners, employers, and operators of gathering places need to evaluate and mitigate the risk of these incidents, or potentially face legal consequences. And the number and type of venues at risk may increase.
3. Test Your Fraud Knowledge
In case you’re thinking fraud is not an issue in your organization, you should know that extrapolating from actual fraud cases examined in 2016 and reported to ACFE, organizations worldwide lose 5% of topline revenue to fraud. Virtually every type of organization from business, government to non-profit sectors is vulnerable to fraud.
4. Slideshow: What Makes a High Reliability Organization?
High reliability organizations (HROs) operate within challenging conditions. Think of air traffic control, aircraft carriers, and nuclear power plants for clear examples of such conditions. Mistakes in these settings often have catastrophic consequences. Yet they seldom fail.
5. 7 Ways to Test the Reliability of Your Organization
If you are a manager in an organization, especially one that faces a complex, dynamic environment, you should be interested in learning how the principles of the High Reliability Organization (HRO) can help you. Your aim should be to develop an organization that moves continuously toward greater reliability of critical outcomes, using every failure as an opportunity for improvement.
6. 18 Fraud Facts to Drive Your 2018 Fraud Prevention Plan
When it comes time to review your fraud risk management and prevention plan, it pays to have some hard statistics in front of you. This slideshow features 18 facts straight from the ACFE’s bi-annual Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse. The report can help you understand and respond to the threat of organizational fraud in your company, and the facts presented can serve as benchmarks for your organization while helping to uncover areas you may have failed to address.
7. 3 Key Components of an Effective Healthcare Security Program
We make many assumptions about our healthcare. We assume our doctors and nurses are well trained and know what they are doing. We assume that the ER is open when we need it and the facility where we receive care is clean as well as safe and secure. While legitimate expectations, they are not always the case. When it comes to healthcare security, having an effective program requires planning, training and consistent implementation. Our latest whitepaper, 3 Key Components of an Effective Healthcare Security Program, walks through the most critical aspects of healthcare security and introduces some ways to ensure your program delivers.
We look forward to continuing to deliver valuable content you can use to better protect your people, brands, and profits in 2018 and beyond. Happy new year!