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Spotlight on Risk Management’s Resilient Women

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Ahead of International Women’s Day, RIMS is celebrating women’s achievements in the profession. Three women leaders in different stages of their careers recently spoke with Risk Management Monitor about what motivated them to make the move into and within the industry, and what the can be done to even the landscape for all professionals. Download the current RIMScast episode for their full interviews.

Kathleen P. Crowe, Aon Risk Solutions and chair of the RIMS Rising Risk Professionals Advisory Group.

What is your impression of risk management’s playing field?

Crowe: I’ve been in the industry for about six years and even in that time I’ve seen a pretty significant change in the overall makeup of the risk management and insurance positions. A lot of companies – Aon included – have women in leadership positions, which I appreciate. Women represent three of my four largest clients – we’re talking about massive, publicly traded companies and they are responsible for risk management functions.

It used to be the boys club but it’s becoming the women’s club, too, and I am glad to have these fantastic women to look up to. There’s been a lot of significant progress and I’m excited about the future.

How much of a challenge is knowledge transfer in risk management?

Crowe: I think everyone is facing similar issues in finding ways to integrate people into different areas so they can be trained to step up. The knowledge sharing process takes time and effort and though it’s a constant reminder that everyone is busy, it’s a way to prioritize and make sure we’re investing appropriately in the younger generation. This will enable them to succeed in higher positions as they progress through their careers and take on management positions and oversee others.

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Cassandra R. Cole, Department Chair of Risk Management Insurance, Real Estate, and Legal Studies at Florida State University; Director of the Master of Science in RiskManagement and Insurance Program and the William T. Hold Professor in Risk Management and Insurance.

You have been an educator for years. Does your curriculum evolve to reflect news and industry trends?

Cole: Definitely. Much of my research comes from what’s going on in the world. It makes the classroom more exciting and the information you share more relevant. It helps the student better understand the connection between what’s going on in the textbook and what’s going on in the real world.

For example, I teach employee benefits on a regular basis and with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, that had implications for company health insurance plans and we spent a lot of time exploring how that law would impact companies, what they offer, their cost of insurance and how it would affect employees.

Are more female students showing an interest in risk management courses and degrees? What could higher education and the profession itself to generate or maintain enthusiasm? 

Cole: There has been a significant shift overall in terms of a gender spread. At the undergraduate level, it’s probably more 50-50. At the advanced programs and doctoral level is where I’m seeing a difference and where we still need to continue to inspire women to pursue those advanced degrees.

I think one of the things other than the actual teaching experience is connecting with students, helping them make decisions, [and] helping prepare them for that transition into the work. It is nice, though, to hear from a student who says ‘you’re the first female business professor I’ve had,’ because it demonstrates where they can go in their careers.

We are definitely making some advances but there are disparities in pay that need to be addressed and corrected.

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Soraya Wright, founder and CEO of SMW Risk Management Consulting and also a member of the RIMS Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Council.

You were at Clorox for more than 20 years and left as the vice president of Global Risk Management and Crisis Management. What influenced you to go out on your own?

Wright: I initially thought I would be semi-retired, but two friends hired me as a consultant. I realized I had to formalize myself as a company if I was going to take on all these projects.

One of my mentees influenced me to keep working because she appreciated that I was someone who raised the issue of bringing on women and people of color onto strategic projects while I had been at Clorox. I thought about the work I was doing as a consultant and her words and they grabbed at my heart, and I felt another purpose. So, I continue to stay engaged and learn and practice my expertise as a risk manager. But I also devote some time for my passion, which is mentoring and coaching others and influencing change so there are opportunities for under-represented members of our profession.

How do you feel the profession can further encourage women to maintain their careers?

Wright: By providing opportunities for those who demonstrate an interest. Mentorship is important and I believe we’re obligated to reach back and help the next generation and also our peers. Our clients have more leverage than many realize, so just requesting that certain types of people with certain viewpoints work on your project can make all the difference in your work and in someone’s career. If we do that we’ll continue to see this wave of advancement and the leveling of the playing field.

RIMS Report: Active Shooter Preparedness For Your Organization

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More than 51 mass shootings have already been documented by GunViolenceArchive.org in 2019, many of which occurred in commercial settings and workplaces. It is clear that workplace shootings are occurring regularly in the United States. By customizing an active shooter plan that focuses on prevention, training, feedback and post-incident protocols, employees will be mentally and physically prepared to react to violent threats, according to a new RIMS Professional Report titled, “Active Shooter Preparedness for Your Organization.”

Authored by RIMS Business Content Writer Justin Smulison and featuring insight from workplace violence and business continuity experts, the report highlights opportunities for risk professionals and their organizations to identify warning signs of potential attacks, best practices in communication and pre-event training, as well as strategies to implement a coordinated effort that minimizes injuries, property damage and reduces uncertainties.

“Physical security measures are nothing more than deterrents,” said Steve Smith, founder and president of Guardian Defense and report contributor. “Every individual in the organization needs to know how to respond to an active threat in order to mitigate the situation. Risk professionals are well-positioned within their organizations to drive discussions, awareness and take a leading role in the development of a workplace violence prevention and response strategy.”

The report is currently available exclusively to RIMS members. To download the report, visit RIMS Risk Knowledge library at www.RIMS.org/RiskKnowledge. For more information about the Society and to learn about other RIMS publications, educational opportunities, conferences and resources, visit www.RIMS.org.

For more threat preparedness insight from Steve Smith, download his interview on RIMScast and read his Q&A about school preparedness on Risk Management Monitor.

Q&A with RIMS 2019 Keynote Speaker Dr. Erin Meyer

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The RIMS 2019 opening keynote address will be delivered by Dr. Erin Meyer, a professor at the INSEAD school of international business in France, and the author of the Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business. She discussed with Risk Management Monitor the concept of “culture mapping,” and how her upcoming address in Boston will provide risk managers with methods to assess cultural rituals and differences before conducting international business.

Download today’s RIMScast episode for Dr. Meyer’s full interview and a deeper dive into culture mapping.

Risk Management Monitor: What will you discuss in the keynote address at RIMS 2019?

Erin Meyer: I will be talking about globalization and how it is impacting our effectiveness when we work internationally.

Risk professionals might be supervising a building code in Indonesia or leading a global team made up of Brazilians and Polish people, for example, and what it means to communicate effectively or make decisions can vary from one country to another.

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I will be presenting a “culture mapping” model that will help participants decode how these cultural differences are impacting their own effectiveness and then think about strategies for working in a more efficient way.

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RMM: What has your experience with risk managers been like?

EM: I’ve noticed that risk professionals were usually in situations where – if they were working internationally – they were collaborating with just one other country at a time. But that has changed recently. In the last couple of years, they’ve often been in these multicultural environments and that’s where the culture mapping tool becomes so important.

When working in a multicultural team, you’ll find that different members have totally different impressions of the same country that they’re working in. This is all part of the concept of what I call “cultural relativity” – where we might have totally different impressions of what’s going on, based on our own cultural perspective. We will explore all this in the keynote.

RMM: What details of your research have surprised you?

EM:  We’ve researched expatriate failure rates and looked at people moving from one country to another who had to return home early because they weren’t able to integrate into their new society. And what came up is the highest failure rate was not “Americans moving to China” or “Japanese moving to the Netherlands,” for example.

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It was Americans moving to the UK.

And I think that’s very interesting because it represents something called “cultural dissonance,” which arises when we think the other culture is the same as ours because of external indicators, like language. For example, when Americans start working with the British and they’re all speaking the same language and eating the same food they assume things will not be so different from their home country.

RMM: Does that make them seem too lax in their work?

EM: They don’t give culture itself as much thought, and the consequence can be that they are perceived as incompetent [by the new colleagues]. So when you’re looking at the culture map – which we’ll be talking about during the keynote – it’s often those small differences that cause problems. Awareness of those differences is crucial.

RMM: How has technology created communication challenges?

EM: When we’re working at a distance we can lose the visual cues that help us, even in our own culture, to understand what’s going on. And when we bring in technology we all lose those visual cues – especially when you consider conference calls, for example. So, in some ways that kind of brings us back to a more standard communication platform but it does make things complicated because of course, we have different ideas about how to use technology in different parts of the world.

RMM: In the Culture Map, you discuss how even the use of email – merely to sum up a discussion – can lead to miscommunication or even an insult. How can that happen?

EM: If you get off of the phone with someone in India, for example, and put into writing everything that was decided and you send it, that might be considered an indication that you don’t trust the recipient. And I think that’s where working at a distance complicates things because if we’re in the same room we might feel that something wasn’t going well. But we’re working a distance, so we make these “errors” and it might hurt the relationship without even realizing it.