SURREY HILLS

BUSINESS COMMUNITY INSPIRING BUSINESSES IN SURREY HILLS

Despite the most challenging circumstances, there is a growing community of Surrey Hills businesses who are collaborating to deliver much needed local produce to families unable to get out, offering online support, wellbeing gifts for loved ones and helping to feed the frontline services. These businesses have all been awarded the ‘Trade Mark Surrey Hills’, an accreditation and mark of local provenance, quality and sustainability. They are working together to deliver a raft of initiatives including raising funds to ensure NHS workers are fed and supported. Lavender Catering are working around the clock to make 3,500 meals a week to feed NHS staff on the frontline. Teaming up with other local Surrey Hills businesses such as Hill House Farm they are supplying high quality meals using local produce from the Surrey Hills. Puremess are sending out a special care gift box of their wonderful chemical free skin care products at 50% reduced price enabling people to pay online and send to an NHS worker. The Cookie Bar, a social Enterprise Surrey Hills has an inspiring range of stories about local businesses supporting their local communities, key workers and NHS staff. supporting training for disadvantaged young people are sending boxes of cookies to their local hospitals supported by donations from people ordering on-line. These packages are not only practical but also offer a clear message of support and regard for our frontline workers. PlantPassion who grow seasonal, scented and sustainable flowers in the Surrey Hills are delivering flowers to their local community and Chimney Fire coffee who roast ethically sourced coffee in the Surrey Hills are sending coffee at cost price to NHS Staff. If you are too tired to cook, want a treat, feeling under the weather or wish to gift a friend in need, Mandira’s Kitchen have teamed up with Albury Organic Vineyard to produce a special meal delivered direct to your home. Simon Whalley, Chairman of Surrey Hills Enterprises said, “The Surrey Hills family are working together to support its Surrey Hills business members and I would like to thank our Corporate Partners for their invaluable support that has enabled us to continue to support the amazing local Surrey Hills Businesses. “Thank you to Charles Russell Speechlys, Wilkins Kennedy, Lexus Guildford, Citywide Financial Services, Kier and Birtley House.” Wendy Varcoe, Executive Director of Surrey Hills Enterprises said, “Surrey Hills is a very special and unique place and we have equally extraordinary and inspiring local Surrey Hills businesses. “They have responded to these difficult circumstances in a special way to offer local produce deliveries and to donate goods and services to help the frontline workers. We congratulate all our Surrey Hills Members on their courage and innovation.”

Find out more about the local businesses, local deliveries and about donating to support your local NHS staff - www. surreyhills.org/surrey-hills-businesses-bringing-products-and-servicesto-your-home/ To donate to support NHS staff - https://www.rschcharity.org.uk/fundraisers/surrey-drive

RISK MANAGEMENT THE REAL RISKS THAT BUSINESSES SHOULD IDENTIFY

By Dr Ann Parchment, Deputy Head of the Department of Strategy and International Business, Surrey Business School.

Traditional risk management thinking is inadequate for the current

Covid-19 crisis, and indeed future crises that may inevitably follow. For years businesses have concentrated on identifying generic risk, which excludes cross-disciplinary risk or multiple interconnected risks.

Business leaders have leant on historical data as an indicator of the size and probability of a possible event, however they now face a combination of diverse risks which are of a magnitude not seen before. Global warming, pandemics such as Covid-19, and so on.

TYPICAL THINKING

Historically, the focus for business has been on quantifying risk, but not on the integrated behaviour of risk. The influence of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) proposed by the Committee of Sponsoring Organisations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) has meant that we focus on making sure our businesses can demonstrate:

• Governance and culture • Strategy and objective setting • Performance • Review and revision • Information, communication and reporting

However, this approach has distracted business leaders from a more comprehensive and resilient attitude to the identification of risks. From the 20 principles that COSO propose, only four are important to understand risk identification:

• The identification of risk • Prioritization of severity • Implementation of risk response • Developing a portfolio view

WHERE ARE BUSINESSES GOING WRONG?

Business leaders may identify the top 10 risks in terms of size; ignoring the potential of other initially low probability risks whose impact changes from week to week, such as Covid-19. Consequently, these lesser priority risks – based on historical size – may have an interconnected behaviour which could result in a catastrophic outcome. Leaders should not only focus on the number, size or probability but also on the thorough identification of multiple areas of uncertainty, hazards and risk.

THE 5 AREAS OF RISK THAT SHOULD BE IDENTIFIED

Drawing on our extensive research, we believe that business leaders should consider looking at their operations from five dimensions: • Generic Risk – the current method of

generic silo identification e.g. health

and safety, environment, legal etc. • Interface Risk – risks that occur at the interface of processes or operations. • Causation Risk – commonly called a chain of causation or cascade where one risk triggers another. • Accumulation Risk – where several disparate risks occur within a very short period of time. • Emerging Risk – truly new risks not just previously identified risk types which occur in new areas.

As seen through the current Covid-19 pandemic, our businesses need to adapt and become agile in their approach to risk, focussing on different risk factors as they change week to week, e.g. supply chain risk and customer demand risk. They need to develop a team that can identify these types of risks earlier in the risk management activity. Firms that don’t take risk identification seriously, may face challenges or even ultimately liquidation due to poor risk identification processes. The five dimensions above reflect the complexity of the ‘real world’ and facilitates a cross disciplinary approach to the holistic identification of all risks which is auditable. Business leaders who embrace risk identification from the start will be able to provide a more comprehensive understanding of their firm’s risk portfolio and better prepare themselves and their businesses for a climate of uncertainty in the future.