Across Europe, the community of internal auditors strives to contribute to the fight against COVID-19. For auditors and managers, even those who are responsible for corporate and organisational governance, risk management involves assuming certain requirements:
- Assuming this responsibility and this need for governance anticipating the risks, especially their extent, in order to face them
- Determining the processes in place to ensure that they enable stakeholders to carry out their contributions in the face of danger
- Helping managers and governance to maintain planning that makes their organisations capable of dealing with risks and disasters and having effective plans
- Deploying internal audit in an auditable environment, due to the existence of treatment, continuity and mitigation plans allowing internal auditors to test their effectiveness by various planning criteria and skills.
Management, governance and management supervisors, therefore, have to execute a series of procedures:
- Keeping people safe from the risks associated with coronavirus, especially employees, citizens, customers, suppliers and partners
- Identifying the levers and drivers of growth and value creation and all that is key to ensure the protection of resources, short-term survival and business continuity
- Integrating criteria such as, sustainability, continuity, security into the strategy perspective: is this research and development for you? It is important to take into account the critical skills required, such as the ability to work remotely
- Sharing the governance of the organisation with staff and managers is important; as well as seeking to build an exhaustive and integrated view that ensured a better understanding of the diversity of the risks, especially, emerging risks
- Communicate well, with compassion and empathy, efficiently and effectively on risks, management systems, internal controls and risk management in relation to the coronavirus. Based on the lessons learned, reviewing the risk management, governance and internal control processes, are very important
Thinking about post-crisis:
In addition to individuals, organisations have been victims of this crisis The crisis has multiple macroeconomic dimensions, as well as being an economic and financial crisis. It is key to draw relevant lessons for the future to learn from…
- Think about the modalities that will ensure short-term survival during an intermediate phase, to assess the impacts and included damage affecting survival capacities. Evaluate and simulate cash flow, capital losses or losses of income and the weight of the incurred costs at the time
- Involve stakeholders who would have the capacity to support the recovery and provide financial assistance, in particular, citizens, suppliers, customers and donors
- Consider investing in risk management systems, internal controls that strengthen the capacities of health and other organisation and in the organisational governance
- Build a society that is prepared and capable of mobilising in the face of risks and can coordinate decisions and transform threats into opportunities
- Demonstrate strategic and civic leadership to act on organisational and social culture
Overall, internal auditors and other evaluators strive to make major contributions to strategic thinking and action. Prevention is better than a cure.
Read the original article.