The top four qualities of a successful business

Given the current environment, risk management is becoming a permanent agenda item on the list at every management meeting.

It’s critical to be a step ahead—to know how to get the most out of your expenses and be able to do more with less without cutting corners.

Having spoken extensively with 600 businesses, our research shows that regardless of industry, there are four essential strategies all thriving companies utilise.

In short, they keep a keen eye on risks their businesses face from both internal and external factors and they balance safety and growth.

As a result, they can capitalise on investment return to achieve an increase in efficiencies, improve accountabilities and performance, reduce cost, prevent incidents and injuries and gain greater visibility across the organisation.

Leaning into challenges

Successful businesses proactively lean into the challenges that their businesses are facing — they take ownership of their risks.

For these companies, risk management is not a matter of ‘out of sight, out of mind’, ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’ or ‘it’s too expensive’.

Mitigating risk must be improvement driven. Further, our research found that if businesses are mitigating risks, they can adapt to change more quickly, which in turn, contributes to their ultimate success.

In addition, we know that leading businesses place a big emphasis on building a risk and safety culture. Their operations conduct regular checks and they strive for best practice.

The five strategies for success Mitti Insurance has uncovered include:

1. The use of digital tools to identify problems in real time

We have seen that when you use digital tools to quickly identify problems in minutes rather than days or weeks, risks are mitigated within a business far more easily.

On average, for small businesses, as little as eight minutes taken to undertake a general inspection of the operation can save thousands of dollars. Using digital tools also captures data over time that can be made to work for the business.

Mitigating the operation’s potential losses might not only affect a company’s finances but also its people or reputation.

By mitigating risks, our research reveals some companies have avoided incurring costs of up to a staggering $50,000 to $150,000. The quicker you’re on top of the issues, the more you have in your back pocket.

2. A genuine safety focus/culture in the business

Improving your business by having a safety first focus is very important. Safety is everyone's business and is driven by all staff. Higher engagement in safety within the team results in less downtime, higher productivity and allows the potential to reduce injuries.

In addition, we have seen some businesses achieve an 87 per cent reduction in near misses within their businesses.

The use of digital tools to identify issues before they happen permits the best companies to enhance and build their risk and safety culture.

3. Staying on top of risks

Every business has copious metrics, regulatory compliance requirements and risks to manage.

Successful companies stay on top of these by gaining an oversight of the performance of their practices over time. Having regular self-assessments scheduled rather than one-off audits gives top performing companies visibility of their data.

They can identify trends and spot patterns to help track their progress in the areas that matter most.

Using regular, quick assessments can also benchmark the effectiveness of a company’s risk controls. It’s important for a business to track how far it’s come on its improvement journey and plan where it would like to go next.

4. Measuring performance to maintain best practice

Everyone loves to know what other people are doing. In business, knowing what your competitors are up to can give you an edge.

Leading companies use internal and external data such as industry insights and case studies to measure their performance.

This enables them to maintain best practice and discover areas for improvement. It’s important for every business to find opportunities to progress.

Learning from others is often the best way for a business to find the right focus and up its risk mitigation game.

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