Risks to your business can arise for many reasons - interest rate or price increases, your competitors' activities, injuries through hazards in the workplace, skilled staff leaving, natural disasters or terrorist activities. Managing those risks is an important part of running your business.

Risk management is a systematic process of making a realistic evaluation of the true level of risks to your business. Before risks can be properly managed they need to be identified - you can begin with these questions:

• What can go wrong?
• What can we do to prevent it?
• What do we do if it happens?

There are standard procedures and processes to handle risk management in business. Standards Australia has developed a Standard, AS/NZS 4360:2004, Risk management that outlines procedures and processes to implement.

A good plan is to develop a risk register to document each potential problem, its level of seriousness, what is required to fix it and who will fix the problem.

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