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Planning & Management

5 of the Most Common Business Risks

Whether you are an enthusiastic entrepreneur who has just formed their business or at the helm of a corporate behemoth, your business could face an array of challenges. Whether those challenges are just starting to emerge or a distant speck on the horizon, you should learn how to tackle them.

Fortunately, many other businesses have been in the situations that your own could soon encounter. Here are five examples of common corporate risks, plus ways that you could help to counter them.

Skipping too many legal obligations

Your company has a broad array of responsibilities, some of which might even be enshrined in law. For example, in the UK, it isn’t legally palatable to spurn employers’ liability insurance. This sheds light on the importance of looking for business insurance quotes from a reliable source, like a broker.

Sadly, while companies tend to be stringent in complying to operations, they are typically slacker with employee-related compliance like wage and hour laws, Inc. observes.

Neglecting to develop operational infrastructure

If your company is a relatively young one recording rapid growth, you could be so overcome with excitement that you forget to implement the operational infrastructure necessary for sustainable gains. Don’t forget to assess and, if necessary, revise your planning and decision-making processes.

You should also be careful not to make the blunder, to which many senior executives are prone, of confusing “infrastructure” with “overheads”. Put customer care at the forefront.

Drops in product and service quality

Failing to pay prolonged attention to that operational infrastructure can risk your products and services faltering in quality. As soon as this happens, your business willbe negatively impacted.

You might have become obsessed with the philosophy of “growth for growth’s sake”, but you need to break this paradigm to get out of the rut.By preserving standards, you can foster customer loyalty – a strategy five times less expensive than reaching out to new customers.

Sacrificing integrity

You can be under heavy pressure both on a company level – for example, to meet estimates with quarterly earnings – and on a personal level, such as when a big bonus is being dangled before you.

Given these pressures, you might be tempted to cut corners. However, in acting on that temptation, you could cultivate a culture of unscrupulousness in your workforce. If employees become more prone to a little lying or stealing, this can undermine trust previously built up within the company.

Recruiting the right staff

You can likely easily comprehend the frustration which many business executives experience when looking for suitable staff. Even on occasions when there is a large pool of unemployed people to pick from, you might still struggle to find candidates who seem a good fit for your firm’s culture.

Forbes advisesĀ that, to overcome this challenge, you “learn how to deal with different personalities, figure out what drives each individual team member and tailor your management accordingly.” If your firm is still small, even just one poorly-chosen worker can hugely hurt the corporate harmony.

By Ethan Theo

Abe WalkingBear Sanchez is an International Speaker / Trainer / Consultant on the subject of cash flow / sales enhancement and business knowledge organization and use. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has authored hundreds of business articles, has worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries since 1982 and has spoken at many venues including the Shakespeare Globe Theater in London.