Lately, product safety crises have been strewn across the news. Remember the peanut-product recall, melamine in pet food, e-coli in spinach and tomatoes? Lead in toys? These problems highlight a huge challenge for corporations: “Cultivating a culture of risk avoidance and accountability at every level of the business.”

Obviously, averting the crisis in the first place is far more preferable to handling the enduring legal and financial consequences. The best way to avoid these incidences is to emphasize the importance of risk avoidance and accountability, and train employees on an ongoing basis.

According to Maskin, ”Creating a culture of risk avoidance and accountability requires education of employees at every level. It is not always intuitive.”

Enterprises must “consciously inject risk avoidance into employees’ thought processes. From the standpoint of corporate governance, the notion of informed and continual risk assessment and avoidance is fundamental.

Given what is at stake, it ought to receive the highest priority.”

In the January-February 2009 issue of Loss Prevention Magazine, Thomas Matthews cites a recent Corporate Executive Board (CEB) survey, which discovered that, “As the economic crisis worsened across 2008, survey research from more than 1,000 employees across multiple industries shows a weakening ethical climate and, correspondingly, more observations of misconduct.”

Matthews’ recommendation is to “counter these negative trends by coaching senior management on how to exemplify and communicate integrity and use periodic employee training and messages to emphasize how a strong culture enables better performance and morale.”

Now, more than ever, enterprises must focus on strengthening their corporate cultures to place higher value on ethical conduct, compliance, and productivity. A renewed focus in these areas will lead to higher performance and sustainable success.

“Any budget cuts, however, shouldn’t lead to a drop in security awareness. As a security manager, make high-level sponsorship of information security a priority within the organization to ensure continued compliance with security policies.”  

“The message could be reinforced by compulsory awareness training… This approach gives real protection at a relatively low cost.”

In 2009, every enterprise will become leaner, smarter, and cheaper, or risk going out of business. Information Security will not be a top priority for most organizations… However, organizational change provides a real opportunity to embed security awareness into companies’ corporate culture, preventing the most common causes of security breaches: Negligent Insiders. (According to the Ponemon Institute)

Single Concept Training is an ideal solution to facilitate this culture change.

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