How To Identify Risks And Opportunities For Your Business

Risk identification should be carried out with the full involvement of the relevant parties to ensure the relevant perspectives and expertise should be represented (e.g. appropriately qualified representatives from various functions, contractors, stakeholders, suppliers and specialists as appropriate).

Risk and opportunity identification is a critical activity at both a strategic and operational level. It needs to include all significant sources of risk, including those beyond our organisation’s control. If a risk, threat, or opportunity is not identified, there can be no strategy to address it.

The objective of this step is not to create an onerous and lengthy list of all possible risks, but to identify all significant risks that could impact our organisation. Risks and opportunities are identified through the use of:

• Workshops and focus groups, using brainstorming approaches;
• SWOT Analysis to identify and analyse strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats;
• PESTLE Analysis to identify and analyse external context issues from local, regional, national and international perspectives;
• Context and Interested Parties Analysis to identify and list the needs and expectations of any interested parties and the risks or opportunities arising from them;
• Interviews with respective management;
• Current business systems as a means of reporting incidents or risks for consideration.

Plan the actions needed to address the risks and opportunities

When deciding how to plan and control the management system, including its component processes and activities, your organisation needs to consider both the type and level of risk associated with them. Ensure that your organisation is taking a planned approach to addressing risks and realising opportunities, and that any actions taken have been recorded. Options to address risks and opportunities can include:

• Avoiding risk;
• Taking risk in order to pursue an opportunity;
• Eliminating the risk source;
• Changing the likelihood or consequences;
• Sharing the risk;
• Retaining risk by informed decision;
• SWOT analysis by the organisation as part of its business strategy to identify the external risk and opportunities and action plans to address them;
• Formal business risk assessment performed by the organisation taking into consideration its context, associated risk and opportunities and mitigation plan;
• Use of process approach by organisation to identify sources of input, activities, output, receiver of output, performance indicators to control and monitor processes, the risks and opportunities associated with them and action plan to address them.

Formal business risk assessment can be performed by the organisation taking into consideration its context, associated risk and opportunities and mitigation plan. The use of the process approach by your organisation can identify sources of input, activities, output, end-user/customer, performance indicators to control and monitor processes, and the risks and opportunities associated with them, and action plans used to address them:​

• Meeting minutes;
• SWOT and/or PESTLE analysis;
• Planning, analysis and evaluation activities;
• Risk determination or evaluation records.

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