Democratizing reputation risk management across the enterprise

Democratizing reputation risk management is important for your business. This means fostering a culture of risk awareness across all functions, because today’s risk landscape is both vast and dynamic. At the same time, you need to develop and implement strong policies and programs to detect, assess and mitigate reputation risks. In this way, you keep ahead of the potential threats rather than reacting and educating only after an incident has occurred. 

Democratization is about developing reputation risk resilience and vigilance across the business and not containing it in the hands of a few. Resiliency dictates that everyone assumes the role of a chief risk officer, able to identify, assess and analyze brand-impacting events. This takes ongoing education and communications to spread awareness about the kinds of risks that can result in loss in revenue and profits, damage to brand trust and identity, and even employee retention and satisfaction. 

Keeping the responsibility for reputation risk management in the hands of a few key people rather than developing it enterprise-wide will create a vulnerability in your compliance and risk management efforts. 

What is reputation risk?

Reputation risk is any threat that can cause loss to a company’s reputational capital, resulting in potential financial damage. These risks can be related to anything from ethics and integrity, culture and compliance, products and services to cyber and financial risks.  A company’s reputation can also be impacted by who it does business with or hires, as well as who its business executives have a relationship with. In short, any business relationship represents a potential risk. 

Reputation risk management is important for all levels of employees, whether your company is a small, medium, or large enterprise. In this age of connectivity, your brand and its public perception can easily be harmed because information is so readily available on the internet. Democratizing reputation management means spreading the value of risk management internally and explaining the ways it can directly impact an individual and the company they work for. 

According to a study by the World Economic Forum, on average, more than 25 percent of a company’s market value is directly attributable to its reputation. It’s not a stretch to say that, often, an organization’s most valuable long-term asset is its reputation.

How can Valital help?

Valital’s AI-powered adverse media monitoring tool was created with democratization in mind. The platform makes it easy to build operational efficiency, because anyone within the organization can use the tool to verify that the people with whom they choose to do business are indeed right for their business. 

Valital uses Natural Language Processing (NLP), a form of AI that enables computers to extract language from unstructured text. The AI learns human language and uses content and context to perform real-time search and pulse analyses of online media, blogs, and tweets, flagging misconducts related to universally recognized misbehaviours: discrimination, financial crime/fraud, harassment, violence, and addiction. Valital combines human and artificial intelligence to help organizations identify, detect, analyze, and mitigate reputation risks. 

Risk is everyone’s business. Ongoing education and communications, effective policies and controls and easy and widespread access to the right tools and technologies will go a long way toward building reputational resiliency across the organization.