An Online Risk Survey is a low-cost and highly effective way to identify and assess Business Risks
Conducting an online risk survey is a low-cost and highly effective way to identify and assess business risks. In our highly competitive and fast changing economy, business executives and Board members should consider conducting an online risk mitigation survey annually. What you will learn can save your business significant money, avoid a hit to your company’s reputation and strengthen your sustainability. It may also save your company from bankruptcy or failure due to a catastrophic incident.
Many businesses have little or no resources focusing on identifying and assessing the risks facing them. Of those companies that do have a risk assessment program, or at least some emphasis on risk management, a significant number focus on a small number of the obvious risks including the typical insurable risks.
In reality, most businesses either are not aware of or are ignoring a wide range of risks that can significantly hurt their bottom line, reputation, and the health and well being of their employees, customers and community. A robust approach to identifying, assessing, managing and mitigating risk should include the ongoing assessment of a broad list of at least 50 – 75 potential types of risks. The approach should also include the assessment of both the potential impact and likelihood of occurrence of each risk type.
The best approach is to gather information from managers and other key employees at all levels of the organization. Some companies also gather input about risk from their Board members. An online risk management survey is the fastest and best way to gather information, insight and suggestions about risks from many people. To that end, each question should include a comments fields. Comments enable responders to say why they believe specific types of risks are or are not likely to occur and why their impact is potentially high or low. Responders can also make suggestions about what can be done to mitigate risks.
Unlike many other types of employee surveys which should guarantee that responses are anonymous, responders to an online risk survey should not be anonymous. It is important to be able to follow up with responders to get additional information and to clarify their answers where needed.
The starting point is to design a comprehensive online risk mitigation survey. It is beneficial to use a survey company with significant knowledge and experience in this area. They will save you time and provide useful reports without the need to spend days using Excel to create your own useful reports.
Give people enough time to send in their responses. Three to four weeks is typically an appropriate response period. Make sure to include enough of the right people as participants in the survey. Include all managers and supervisors in your organization and other employees that are in key positions with the knowledge about customers, suppliers, business processes, contracts and regulations, and other risk-related points.
It is important to thoroughly and objectively analyze the responses, including the ratings and comments. This is another area in which an experienced survey company can add significant value.
The final steps include to creating an action plan to manage and mitigate the key risks, communicating the assessment and implementation plan with all appropriate people and then focusing on effective implementation. Implementation may require financial and other resources, and it will definitely require strong visible support from your company’s senior management.
Given the fast-changing pace of most businesses, it is useful to conduct online risk reduction surveys annually to track progress and trends, and to identify new risks that surfaced in the past year.
Knowing how to make Money in a Recession starts with knowing The Rules of Wealth
It might be wise to seek investing tips from the financial experts. The question is, who are the financial experts? Colleges, Universities and even the public schools are full of professors and teachers who are teaching students to the best of their ability, but many of them are only teaching the information they have access to. In the same way, these institutions are educating the financial advisors who most of us go to for investing tips and advice on wealth building.
The obvious problem with this is that the knowledge of making money in a recession and the knowledge of wealth building and of creating multiple income streams is not common. It’s closely guarded by the top 1% of the population which has possession of a mind-boggling 99% of the wealth. Would you want that information getting out if you were using it for your own wealth building and for the benefit of yourself and those you love?
Of course not, it’s a part of human nature and our will to survive and to succeed in a very competitive world. This is exactly why you can’t trust the investing tips and financial advice coming from the socially accepted experts. So how can you learn how to make money in a recession and leverage financial crisis include yourself in the next generation of self-made millionaires?
Knowing how to Make Money in a Recession starts with kowing The Rules of Wealth
Knowing how to make money in a recession starts with knowing the rules of wealth, and those rules have not changed since the beginning of time. The flow of wealth is controlled by human behaviors, and once you understand how this works, it becomes the simplest and most valuable information you’ll ever gain access to. Did you know that EVERY world power in history has gone through a predictable pattern when it comes to the flow of wealth?
Did you know that this pattern is determined by a simple and specific set of predictable human behaviors? The first time I heard this, it seemed almost as unbelievable as it was intriguing. Even more amazing has been how the discovery of this knowledge and has changed my entire outlook on wealth building. If you’re ready to gain access to this knowledge and stop listening to the advice of broke “experts,” you could not have picked a better time, because the opportunity is coming fast.
Some simple Guidelines to avoid major mistakes in Investing
If you are not sure how to invest money and want to invest to get ahead, don’t start investing until you know some rules of the road. Few things are black and white in the investing world, but you can avoid major mistakes when you invest by following some simple guidelines.
Get the idea out of your head that investing money and outperforming the markets is easy. Few professional investors have consistently done this in the past 10 years; and 2011, 2012, and 2020 will likely be no different. Your objective when you invest should be to earn better than average returns with only moderate risk. To do this you’ll need to invest in stocks, bonds, and perhaps real estate.
Forget about picking your own stocks to invest in unless you intend to make stock picking a part time job. One poor pick can ruin your year. You can’t afford to NOT make money when the stock market has a GOOD year, which is most often the case. Diversification is the key to investing money and participating in the stock market over the long term. The same is true when you invest in bonds. Few average investors can analyze individual bond issues, so they are best off investing in a diversified portfolio of bonds.
Real estate still looked dead in early 2011, but don’t believe that it will never again be a good place to invest money. In the future it is quite likely that 2011 or 2012 will define the bottom in this troubled market, even if (when) inflation and interest rates heat up. When that happens, investing money will be a real challenge for anyone trying to find the single best place to invest. Don’t spend your time or money trying to out-guess the markets and other investors. Instead, put together a diversified and balanced investment portfolio.
How can a beginner invest in stocks, bonds and real estate and at the same time have some money safely tucked away earning interest? You can do this by investing money in just three different mutual funds. Let the professionals pick the stocks and bonds for you by investing in a traditional balanced fund, where about 60% goes to stocks with most of the rest going into bonds. That simple formula has worked for years, so invest most (about 70%) of your investment portfolio there. The other 30% divide equally with half going into a real estate equity fund, and the other half going to a money market fund for safety.
Don’t get distracted when investing money and don’t try to time the markets. Real estate will again come back into favor and interest rates will likely rise in 2011 and/or 2012. When rates go up returns on money market funds will get better. When real estate recovers, you’ll be there. When you invest money in a balanced fund you’ve got stocks and bonds covered. If you invest by the simple guidelines provided here you should be better able to relax. You’ve covered the bases and avoided making major mistakes.
Five Ways in which you can Benefit from the Services of a Financial Planner
There are at least five ways in which you can benefit from the services of a financial planner. As the name suggests, the financial planner is a professional who helps people identify/formulate their financial goals, and then make plans towards the attainment of those goals. Consequently, the five ways in which you can benefit from the services of a financial planner include where:
1. The planner helps you in making an accurate assessment of your current financial position: the truth of the matter is that many of us have no idea where we actually are, in our financial lives. We don’t have a clear picture with respect to what we own, in terms of assets, and what we owe in terms of liabilities. You will be surprised to learn that there are many people who don’t even have a clear picture on what they earn (from their various channels). The end result of all that is the situation where a person’s financial life runs on ‘autopilot.’ And that tends to lead to a situation where a person earns money, and somehow it ‘disappears,’ and somehow he or she doesn’t have an idea on where exactly the money went to. The financial planner helps you bring the whole situation under control, by helping you make an accurate assessment of your current financial situation. At this point, the planner may also help you identify the opportunities before you, as well as the threats staring at you, with respect to your financial life.
2. The financial planner helps you in financial goal formulation: having helped you make an accurate assessment of ‘where you are’ with respect to your financial life, they also help you work out where you want to go, again with respect to your financial life. That they do through the process of financial goal formulation. The planner won’t, of course, create the goals for you. You have to own the goals. What they do is help you in the process of goal formulation.
3. The financial planner helps you in the creation of financial plans: the formulation of financial goals is akin to the definition of ‘where you want to go’ financially. Just knowing where you want to go is typically not enough to get you there. You also need to know how exactly you are going to get there. This is through the creation of plan(s) toward the attainment of your financial goals. This is also where the bulk of the planner’s work comes from, hence the name of the profession.
4. The financial planner helps you by building ‘accountability’ into your financial life: whilst many of us may already have clearly defined financial goals and plans for their attainment, what keeps us from actually attaining them is our lack of accountability. In these types of matters, it helps to have someone (especially a non judgmental professional) you can be accountable to, and that is a way in which the financial planner can help you.
5. The planner helps you in the elimination of finance-related stress: the reason as to why people experience finance-related stress tends to be where they feel that their financial lives are ‘out of control.’ The financial planner, by helping you identify your current financial situation, create financial goals and come up with plans for their attainment can ultimately help you stop feeling as if your financial life is out of control. That way, they would also have helped you in the elimination of finance-related stress.
It is mandatory you attend the Counseling before entering Bankruptcy Process
Debts and loans can ruin your daily life and this is not the end, they leave a permanent mark on your credit reputation due to which is becomes very difficult for you to avail loans in future. Even though the process of bankruptcy helps you get out of debt, it will still badly affect your credit report. However, as a process, it is mandatory that you attend the counseling before entering bankruptcy process. This is a part of the debt management process that implies that the customers are well educated about handling of credit cards and loans.
If you have made up your mind for going with bankruptcy process, you should be very careful to monitor each and every activity of the creditor. The main reason behind counseling being mandatory for the customers is to make sure that the customers do not fall into such situations in future. According to experts and financial advisers, it is very essential that all credit card users take these counseling and find their ways to deal with the situation. In these counseling sessions, you will be given a brief idea of the process and other methods available to deal with the situation.
Apart from this, you will also learn about the advantages and disadvantages of each of the methods. It is very important that you know the implications of such methods since you will have to select any one among them. Unless you are well aware of the methods and the back end process, you will not be confident of the outcome. Added to this, in these sessions, you will also learn about different ways to handle such plastic money and use them effectively. Being a customer, you should always be open to such sessions since it will be life time learning experience for you. Once you know the concepts and the implications of the different methods and the best practices in handling such cards, it will be rare for you to end up in troubles like these. So, take up these sessions and try to make the best of it so that you can not only save the current situation, but also be prepared for future.
