Business risk can be scary, but risk is necessary for many small businesses to achieve growth. We don’t want to avoid risk all together but rather control small business risk so it does not become a hindrance.
Controlling risk isn’t necessary difficult. It just takes consideration and planning. Unfortunately, your business insurance does NOT control small business risk, but it helps to restore your business after an accident.
A firm understanding the 5 techniques outlined in the video below will help prevent or at least reduce the impact of an accident on your business.
5 Techniques to Control Small Business Risk
Video Transcript:
My name is Ryan Hanley, I’m director of marketing and licensed agent here at The Murray Group and it’s both my role here, as well as my passion to help business owners like you receive the maximum benefit from your insurance.
But as fate would have it, today we’re not going to talk about insurance and instead focus on risk management.
More specifically, Risk Control.
Risk Control is any conscious action or inaction to minimize the probability, frequency, severity or unpredictability of loss.
Insurance helps us recover from loss… risk management helps us prevent the loss from ever happening.
There are three theories on why accidents happen:
– People – so people do dumb things
– Engineering – Things break
– Systems – Processes don’t work the way they’re supposed to.
There are 5 methods or techniques for controlling these risks to our business:
– Avoidance – pretty simple just stay away from whatever the potential risk is.
– Prevention – We build in processes or controls to make sure that the risk doesn’t happen or at least that the risk is less likely to happen.
– Reduction – We realize the risk is unavoidable and put measures in place to make sure the loss is as small as possible.
– Duplication – we make copies of whatever it is that could be impacted by a loss so if one is destroyed will always have a backup to take it’s place
– Transfer – this is often done through contracts moving the obligation of risk and loss to another party.
While I’ve listed five techniques for risk control, there are very few instances when using only one of these techniques is appropriate. Most often we’re going to use some combination of methods to properly protect our business.
A common example relates to workers compensation insurance, to keep claims down we want to place Avoidance, Prevention processes in place as well as Reduction processes for getting employees that do get injured back to work as soon as possible.
At The Murray Group, our job is to provide insurance products to help you recover after a loss and provide risk management guidance to reduce the chance of an accident ever happening.
If you think our agency would make a good partner for your business and you’d like to begin the process of receiving a proposal for your business insurance program, please give us a call at 518-777-7777 or you can click here to begin the process by email.
If you’d like to learn a little bit more about The Murray Group first, please click this link here or the link below this video to subscribe to our Risky Business Newsletter.
Thank you and Good luck,
Ryan Hanley, CIC