Risk Awareness and Risk Culture: Risk Management for Non-Risk Professionals – Amsterdam, 26–30 Jul 2027

Programme overview

Introduction:

Risk awareness is usually weakest where work actually happens: a near-miss goes unreported, a workaround quietly becomes routine, a supplier delay is noticed by one team but never reaches the manager who could act, and the risk register is seen as the risk office's paperwork. This Core Concept course gives employees, supervisors and departmental risk champions a plain working vocabulary for spotting, rating, recording and escalating risk in their own unit, and shows how everyday behaviour shapes risk culture. Participants build a Departmental Risk Register and Escalation Plan for their own team.

Course Objectives:

• Recognise the operational, financial, people, information, supplier and reputational risks that arise in routine departmental work and describe them as clear cause, event and consequence statements
• Rate departmental risks with a simple likelihood and impact scoring grid and record them in a risk register with named owners and existing controls
• Explain in plain terms who does what under the IIA Three Lines Model and how a departmental control owner differs from the risk function and internal audit
• Apply the organisation's risk appetite to everyday choices such as approving exceptions, accepting workarounds or changing a supplier
• Escalate emerging risks, near-misses and cross-departmental dependencies through the right channel with a concise risk message
• Read risk culture indicators and pulse survey results for a team and plan the actions a departmental risk champion takes to strengthen them

Target Audience:

• Staff who run daily processes, approvals and customer or supplier transactions and are first to see problems emerging
• First-line supervisors who allocate work, approve exceptions and decide what gets reported upward
• Departmental risk champions and risk coordinators who keep the unit's risk register current and liaise with the risk function
• Administrative and operations staff who maintain procedures, checklists and records that act as day-to-day controls
• Project and team members who handle hand-offs between departments where risks are often lost
• Newly appointed control owners who have been given responsibility for specific controls without a risk background

Course Outline:

Day 1: What Risk Means in Everyday Departmental Work

• Risk, Uncertainty and Opportunity Defined Through the ISO 31000 Principles in Plain Language
• Departmental Risk Categories: Operational, Financial, People, Information, Supplier and Reputational
• Cause, Event and Consequence Statement Writing for Workplace Risks
• Near-Miss, Incident and Loss Event Distinctions With Real Workplace Examples
• Team Risk Awareness Baseline Questionnaire and Discussion

Day 2: Roles, Appetite and the Three Lines in Plain Terms

• IIA Three Lines Model Roles Explained for Staff and Supervisors
• Control Owner, Risk Owner and Risk Champion Responsibility Chart
• Risk Appetite Statements Translated Into Everyday Approval and Exception Decisions
• Preventive, Detective and Corrective Controls in Routine Procedures and Checklists
• Risk Culture Defined With the IRM Risk Culture Framework

Day 3: Spotting, Rating and Recording Departmental Risks

• Process Walk-Through Hazard and Weak-Point Spotting Technique
• Simple Likelihood and Impact Scoring Grid and Consistent Rating Rules
• Departmental Risk Register Columns: Description, Owner, Existing Controls, Rating and Actions
• Near-Miss Log Design and Trend Review for a Small Team
• Control Self-Check Routine: Is the Control Working as Designed

Day 4: Escalation, Cross-Departmental Risk and Speaking Up

• Escalation Ladder and Trigger Criteria for Supervisors and Risk Champions
• One-Page Risk Message Format for Communicating Risks Upward
• Interface and Hand-Off Risk Mapping Between Departments and Suppliers
• Psychological Safety and Speaking-Up Behaviours in Team Meetings
• Risk Culture Indicators and the IRM Risk Culture Aspects Scorecard Applied to a Team Pulse Survey

Day 5: Case Work and the Departmental Risk Register and Escalation Plan

• Hospital Pharmacy Stock-Out Case: Missed Warning Signs and Escalation Gaps
• Logistics Warehouse Case: Unreported Near-Misses and Workaround Drift
• Own-Unit Risk Identification and Rating Exercise Using the Scoring Grid
• Departmental Risk Register and Escalation Plan Drafting for an Own Team
• Peer Review Panel on Register Quality, Owners and Escalation Triggers

Skills You Will Gain:

• Workplace Risk Spotting
• Risk Statement Writing
• Likelihood and Impact Rating
• Risk Register Upkeep
• Control Self-Checking
• Risk Escalation Communication
• Interface Risk Mapping
• Risk Culture Pulse Reading

Why Attend This Course:

• Return with a Departmental Risk Register and Escalation Plan for your own unit, reviewed by peers from other sectors
• Know exactly when a concern, near-miss or workaround should go to your supervisor, the risk champion or the risk function
• Speak the same risk language as the risk office and internal audit without needing specialist training
• Help your team raise and record problems early instead of discovering them after a loss

Conclusion:

A risk register only protects a department when the people doing the work notice problems, describe them clearly and pass them to someone who can act. The course moves from what risk means in daily tasks, through roles under the Three Lines Model, risk appetite and routine controls, to spotting, rating and recording risks, then escalation, hand-off risks, speaking up and reading risk culture signals. The final day applies these habits to multi-sector cases and produces a Departmental Risk Register and Escalation Plan for each participant's own unit.