Companies are merging almost every day. Downsizing and outsourcing continue to be prevalent.

  • What can Risk Managers do to hold onto their positions?
  • Why are some Risk Managers always able to land on their feet while other seemingly well-qualified individuals are not so fortunate?

The answer lies in their ability to broaden their focus and make an impact on their organizations. Lets look at two Risk Managers with similar qualifications. They each have 10 years of Corporate Risk Management experience, a strong technical insurance background, good overall knowledge of claims and loss control and the ability to look at alternative risk financing strategies to optimize the structure of their insurance programs.

The first person is viewed as an excellent technician who thinks in terms of insurance as it relates to the exposures the organization faces. The second person thinks about solutions that do not have to involve insurance. This person realizes that organizations face all kinds of exposures everyday like reputation risk that you just can not fix with insurance.

The first person is seen as a solid corporate employee who can be counted on to maintain a sound insurance program, but the second person is viewed as a high impact performer who adds value in many ways to the organization.

By taking a broader perspective and finding ways to apply risk management principals to non-traditional exposures the Risk Manager will be accomplishing a number of things:

  • The daily grind will no longer be a grind because life will be a lot more interesting.
  • You will provide a greater value to your organization.
  • Risk Management will be a much more important function to the organization.
  • Generally, when a function is perceived as more valuable and you can demonstrate how this function has positively impacted the organization, you have then created more job security for yourself and your entire department.

If you are interested in taking action and helping to improve upon your own job security and future then consider this your wake-up call. Take a few minutes each day to think about how you can add value to the bottom line. Those who do will be much less likely to be outsourced and much more likely to be invited to stay on if the company gets acquired or merges with another organization.